A disadvantage of getting on years (One can’t say they are old, can they?) is that people start treating you as if you were old, while you try to convince them that you have the mindset of a twenty-year-old, but with more wisdom to share. (Those who lack experience begin rolling their eyes about now) Forget that the muscles do not work as well and ten-minute chores now take forty minutes. While age is not the be-all, it does mean you have seen almost everything at least once, there are few surprises, and maybe just maybe understand more than those who are age-challenged. Those long-held truths blew up on January 6, 2021.
The Age of Enlightenment brought us clever ideas like “We the people ...” or “governments by consent of the people,” and “All men are created equal.” Jefferson and Madison wrote it down so we would not forget it, and with the hope that we, two and a half centuries later, would still live by these truths. Hamilton and Jay, then Madison, argued their better points in the Federalist Papers. Two-hundred-forty-five years after the Declaration of Independence, however, we are on the brink of another civil disturbance. Advocates of white supremacy and conspiracy theory believers lead this new revolution. While these groups certainly stood out at the march on the Capital, most of the insurgents were regular folks, janitors, police officers, IT specialists, professional managers, and CEOs.
All seemed upset about something, afraid of something, joined at the hip with swelling numbers of hate groups lurking in the dark web or on conspiracy platforms that spew hate. Some lay the blame at the feet of the unvetted information age of social media and its ability to push junk data across the world in nanoseconds. [i] A recent poll asked respondents to answer true-or-false to the following statement: “A group of Satan-worshiping elites who run a child sex ring is trying to control our politics and media.” Fifty-three percent of the respondents said that that was true.[ii] Disinformation is so rampant across the country that a candidate who denies the 9/11 plane attack on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, who says that the killing of children in Sandy Hook was a staged event, who calls for the murder of Constitutional Officers, can get herself elected to Congress. The people who elected her must have believed the lies ignored the lies or supported her beliefs. There is a disconnect between self-preservation, hate, and a clear understanding of the notions from which this nation grew its uniqueness.
A once and former president, lacking any appreciation for the ideals of a self-governing, democracy, and its institutions, easily convinced seventy plus million people to follow him. He convinced them to vote to re-elect him and to fight for him in a battle to negate the election. He high-jacked large religious groups, conservative groups, and other normally moderate groups in his quest for power. He convinced them that evil people stole the election from him, which he claimed to have won by a large margin. He called them to DC, then urged them and convinced them to march to the Capitol, to overthrow the government by force. The last time our Temple of Democracy was breached was during the War of 1812. Those of us who have seen it all sat in shock watching a President call citizens to arms. We sat in shock watching a band of terrorists desecrate our symbol of freedom, and the world watched in shocked disbelief. Any moral authority we might have had as the standard for democracy melted before our eyes and their eyes. The terrorist demeaned the nation and it will take generations to repair. Only five members of his party voted to impeach him for his seditious behavior. How does this happen?
There have been others before him who did not get it right, who did not understand or decided to create a new normal. What we see around us today is not the makings of one person’s four-year term. We know because we understand that it takes about twenty years for a new idea to become a new norm. It is not quite the same as saying that whatever we are against today will be the usual a generation hence, but you get the point. The current state of affairs can be traced back a number of years if one looks.
Hate is not unusual anymore; it is a commodity that shows up at every opportunity to destroy our way of life, our values, and our institutions. Our American value that all people are created equal isn’t the value of the Proud Boys; these men roam the countryside and the cities preaching the sermon of white supremacy and male dominance; are they afraid that black and brown women will challenge their manhood? Canada declared them a terrorist organization. Anti-immigrant groups protest against our democracy, regular folks with extremist ideas mingle with the organized haters and soon you have homegrown terrorists that want to bring down our system of government.[iii] Homeland Security issued a National Terrorism Advisory System Bulletin last month; it warned police departments about these terrorist groups. How does this happen?
We don’t see these things happening when they happen before our eyes. We don’t realize that a TV channel dedicated to one philosophy of government peddles division and hate as we watch it. We don’t see the danger we support when we choose one channel or station over another because it produces programs with which we agree; liberal, conservative, reactionary, or radical. We don’t realize what is happening to us when we can’t distinguish between real news and news produced by foreign bot centers.
The pundits may rail against the “new” thoughts, but by next week, there is something else about which to rail. We have seen things happen and done nothing until it was too late. We have seen things happen that disgusted us but waited until we could not take it anymore before acting. We saw McCarthyism and said nothing for too long. We saw minorities fight in WWII and come home to segregation and we said nothing. We saw US citizens of Japanese descent sent to internment camps and said nothing. We saw women denied the vote and tried to keep it that way until it happened. We have seen too much and let it pass. Every now and then, however, events reach deep and require us to search for the soul.[iv] We live through one now, and can’t let it pass because it will change our experiment for the worse, it will turn us into the proverbial banana republic, it will nullify a quarter of a millennial of trying to make a more perfect union. We can’t let this happen.
I have lived through one-third of the 245 years of this experiment in self-governing, living out Descartes’ thesis; cogito ergo sum. The lifespan is at once hard to contemplate but provides perspective. Something is missing. How often can we say that our system of government is fragile, but it is fragile? It relies on its institutions to survive, the real ones, the implied ones, and the hoped-for ones. It relies on a sense that we strive to be one, knowing we aren’t, but we strive. We are called to be fair, knowing we aren’t always, but we strive. Our creed tells us that all men are created equal, but we don’t treat everyone equally, but we strive. Our motto, E Pluribus Unum, tells us to welcome everyone, but too many eschew immigrants, but striving makes us better. Something is missing! We’re not striving enough. Someone didn’t get the message.
Brookings’ Jon Valant thinks that we haven’t taught our kids or ourselves how to deal with technical literacy; how to use our technology gadgets. When QAnon can convince hundreds and thousands of people to believe its conspiracy theories, something is wrong. When the White House staff begins to believe these wild fantasies and act upon them, something is wrong. The bombing of Pearl Harbor, a day that will live in infamy, brought young people rushing from their homes to join the armed forces, rich, and poor, white-collar and blue-collar, black and white, they all joined to help defend the country. Would that happen today?
With a massive viral pandemic taking down hundreds of thousands of lives in one year, some parts of the country openly defy simple public health measures to help stem the spread. Mask wearing is a political statement, science is scoffed at, Congress is at loggerheads trying to provide minimum assistance to the jobless, the hungry, and the businessperson going under, all through no fault of their own. How does this happen?
Is it time for the leaders of the country to step up their efforts to bring some sense of unity to the nation? The question reads like an echo. Haven’t we said that after every major event that divides us? There is a difference, it seems to me, between free speech and anarchy, between protesting and insurrection, between disagreement and hate, between strong beliefs, and overthrowing what gives us the right to protest, to disagree, and to hold strong beliefs.
Seventy plus million people voted for Trump in the last election. Seventy plus and more millions of people voted for Biden. Those who voted for Trump did it because he was a Republican, or because they dislike Democrats or they liked Trump and disliked Biden. They did it because they thought Trump was more capable of running the country or liked his policies, or for whatever reason. Those who voted for Biden did it for opposite reasons. At the end of the ballot counting, however, the election should be over. Most of the seventy million Trump supporters have decided that the campaign is over. The votes were counted, and the results confirmed. Most decided to move on or to regroup for 2024.
Both sides, however, need to find a way to negate the influence and the operations of the homegrown terrorists in our midst. Both parties need to end the hate for each other in the halls of Congress. Both parties need to come to grips with the long-held notion that the nation is more important than the party, or of one member of the party. Can we return to voting for or against the substance of an idea rather than for or against whoever introduced the idea? We cannot have another storming of the Capitol. We cannot have a country ruled virtually or in reality by gangs of thugs. A bit of civility would be appreciated as well.
[i] Jon Valant, Brown Center Chalkboard, Brookings Institute, February 1, 2021
[ii] Ibid, NPR/Ipsos poll, December 2020
[iii] The Year in Hate and Extremism 2020, Southern Poverty Law Center, February 1, 2021
[iv]
Jon Meacham covers the search for the soul of the nation in his 2018 book The
Soul of America, The
Battle for Our Better Angels. It is a must-read for those who care about the homeland’s democracy.
