The United States is 250 years old, and something is
wrong. Very wrong.
You know it. Everyone knows it. You can feel it. People aren’t happy. It’s hard to define. How do you remedy a wrong you can’t define?
Is it the manic government we experience each day? Or is it the economics we don’t understand; or the prices we pay at the pump and the grocery outlets? Is it the divide between the have-nots, the have-a-lots, and the they-have-too-much folks?
Would better government policies cure the wrongs we can’t define? Would more competent cabinet secretaries make a difference? Is it time for religious leaders to get right-sided and preach a little kindness to us?
So what is the wrong? How do we define it? I can’t remember when so many people were so unhappy or so worried about the now and the future. Can you? It could be something that has been building for a decade or two and we just didn’t notice it, or it could be the recent debasing of our culture, or both and much more. I’m not sure, but I know wrong when I feel it.
You don’t have to read Gibbon’s six-volume classic, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire to see the similarities between then and now. The good news, I suppose is that the empire lasted a bit over four hundred years, so we still have some fix time.
It is almost too easy to find comparisons, not all the fault of our current leader, but heavily skewed in that direction. One could point out the economic crises we are enduring, of our own making: high inflation caused by a self-started war against Iran to achieve what had been achieved by a previous administration without a war. That leads to a discussion of the world’s distrust of our America First motives and growing willingness to use the Chinese Renminbi as the international currency.
One could point out the excessive costs of self-started wars in both money and armaments. We have shifted arms from around the world to the Near East, leaving our flanks vulnerable for years on end that it will take to rearm. To add to the strain, we have done everything in our power to excise ourselves from mutual aid agreements with other nations, reducing their incentive to come to our support if needed, as they did after 9/11.
One could point out the administration’s efforts to rule by executive decree instead of as one of the co-equal branches of the government. It has taken over independent agencies, vacuumed the halls of Congress of any power or influence and appointed sycophants to the judiciary in full view of everyone.
One could point out the depth of corruption in the current administration. We have seen corruption before; Andrew Johnson was known for his “pay-for-pardon” programs and his attempt to override the Tenure of Office Act. Grant was too loyal to his corrupt appointees’ tax evasion plots. Harding was known for graft and corruption at the highest levels, even leasing oil reserves for bribes. Nixon used his powers to direct the IRS, CIA and FBI to investigate his political enemies. We know what corruption looks like.
The level of corruption in and by the current administration would make the misdeeds of previous presidents seem trivial by comparison. Where to start?
What better way to celebrate the semi-quincentennial anniversary than to build a monstrosity-looking fight cage on the White House lawn. To rejoice about the ability of our democracy and republic to outwit naysayers, combatants were cheered on by the nation’s leaders as they tried to do bodily harm to each other. To quote William Krystal of the Bulwark Newsletter, "it's violent, it's commercial, it's grandiose, it's tacky, and it dishonors a place once thought worthy of care and respect." It's on the White House lawn for god's sake. Remember when we were once the shining city on a hill, a light for the rest of the world to admire? This administration has no shame. It is wrong.
It’s not very classy to tell someone that they aren’t very classy. But here goes. Most of our recent presidents have been classy people or at least pretended to be. They believed in the American experiment and understood the need for our fragile institutions. Our current administration isn’t very classy, from the top to the underlings. And most of them, from the top to the underlings, don’t believe in democracy, and therefore don’t mind destroying the institutions that make it work. The current use of Make America Great Again has made us a faltering democracy, a people unsure of their future, and degraded our values. We are even at the point where many question who is and who ought to be an American.
Maybe we just don’t know how to be classy anymore. It is the sort of thing you learn early on, on the knee of your elders, over time. Your institutions teach you how to behave, how to treat others, how to agree and disagree, how to socialize with folks who have different beliefs without upsetting the Thanksgiving dinner, and how to be nice even when we are being strong. We all miss the mark from time to time, but we know it, everyone around us knows it, and we apologize. Apology accepted; pass the gravy.
More deeply, we might ask if our leaders lack a decent level of civility, lack an appreciation for moderation and concession, lack basic social skills, or just have a mean streak that built up over the years. Look at some of the unclassy things they forced on us in the last couple of years.
Not to brag, but I’ve been around for the last thirty-five percent of our two-hundred-fifty years since broadcasting our independence to the world. I can’t remember a time when so many people tried so hard to destroy our institutions, our culture, and our general way of life. The lack of class is overwhelming and hard to comprehend.
In 1962, JFK gathered over one-hundred-seventy of the brightest intellectuals in the country to honor our Nobel Prize winners. He noted, “I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, which has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone." Today our president begs aloud for the medal and willingly accepts one as a token from someone who actually earned hers. Recently, our president indicated that he might give himself the Medal of Honor. How far we have fallen. It’s wrong.
The Oval Office was a center of world influence: simple in design, strong in dignity, quiet unspoken power prevailing for all to see and admire. From that singular room, decisions were made that saved the democracies of Europe, sent men to the moon, fed the world’s hungry, improved educational opportunity; mended the ravages of war and led a world order that stifled hostile interventions for nearly fifty years. It was the center of world power for decades: quiet, unobtrusive, majestic.
Today the room’s simplicity is replaced with cheap looking golden kitsch on the walls and fireplace, portraits hanging from every square inch of wall space, and used for verbal cage matches with world leaders. Today’s decisions create turmoil in the world, erase decades of effort to create a more perfect union, destroy our cherished institutions. What was once a national treasure is no more than a shell of our past.
The seldom quoted Calvin Coolidge once said that “It is a great advantage to a President and a major source of safety to the country, for him to know that he is not a great man.” It is hard to be a president without an outsized ego, without a tinge of grandiosity. But an inflated sense of self-importance, need for admiration, and a lack of empathy is a mental health issue. It has a name: NPD, Narcissistic Personality Disorder.
Sometimes when a person suffers from NPD they want to put their names on buildings dedicated to other heroes, put large banners of their picture on government buildings, or on new currency. I’m no doctor, but I know NPD when I see it.
I did some research about other presidents who put their names on government buildings while they were in office. There wasn’t much info on the subject. Surely there must be data about past presidents who wanted to put their image on our currency. Nope, nothing. There must be data about past presidents who wanted to build monuments to bust up the great design of DC by Pierre Charles L’Enfant in 1791. Nothing there either. I’m not a doctor, but …
Democracy is losing or it is taking on a new definition. Make America great again has been the mantra of presidents since Roosevelt and likely before. It was Reagan’s campaign slogan, Clinton used it all the time. Obama hoped for it. But none of the past presidents have done so much to tear down the institutions that define and support the concept of We The People. If the polls are correct, we may not have to suffer the destruction of our democracy, the majority of Americans do not support the President’s programs or the way they are implemented.
Hopefully, this isn’t what the start of the decline and fall look like.
