Time for Some Tough Love
Like many others, I woke this morning to the news I was expecting by the time I went to bed, on election eve. Mr. Trump will be our 47th President. A long-time friend and former work colleague expressed her angst on FaceBook this way:
“Utterly devastated this morning. Terrified for the future of our country under this tyrant, misogynistic, homophobic, and felon’s rule. I can’t believe this was allowed to happen “
She already had one commiserating response. I can relate. It’s difficult for me as a retired Marine officer and (obsessively engaged citizen) to accept the news that we as a country are collectively so bereft of discernment and decency. But looking back, some part of me has been expecting this. The conditions enabling 45 to morph into 47 didn’t go away when he did four years ago.
There is a saying in competitive sports, to wit: “You ARE your record.” In theory, there are teams who are “better” than their record. Bad luck, ya know. And the occasional human error? But in reality, it’s been a lot of mistakes, going way back. Cumulatively they contribute to the record of Team U.S.A. The underpinning truth of the 2024 election is that decades of mismanagement or derelict inattention have finally come home to roost.
This has been happening by inches, for longer than most of us want to admit. And at some level, we’re all responsible. Government “of, by and for the people” means something, and none of us get a pass on our own part in establishing or permitting the conditions that put us where we are today.
Citizens United
We all have had a hand in allowing money to seep into politics (read that Citizens United). When presidential campaigns cost upwards of five billion dollars, we’ve lost our way. Campaigns shouldn’t last two years and they ought to be publicly funded. SCOTUS’s specious declaration that money is free speech, or that corporations and special interest groups should be treated as citizens has set us up for this. Even if you were unaware of the Citizens United ruling, you are feeling its effects in the ubiquitous political ads the ruling has enabled.
Each of us individually might say my senator didn’t confirm Justice Anthony Kennedy who opined money was tantamount to free speech. Maybe not. But collectively, are we not responsible for the composition of the Senate—and to some extent, how they view the issues in front of them? How many of us weighed in with our respective Senators when Justice Kennedy was nominated and confirmed? I’m guessing not many.
Gerrymandering
For long than most of us have been alive, we allowed both parties (but lately, Republicans especially) to gerrymander districts. No one alive today was around to prevent its original application. But all of us who paid attention in school knew what it was. And how many of us have raised a sustained stink about it? It’s so deeply embedded in our political history that most of us sigh, shrug and go back to our lives rather than pressing for universal anti-gerrymandering reforms. But with more voter data than ever available today, the advantages of a gerrymandered district have only increased. The predictable outcome is that in too many states, politicians pick their constituents, rather than the other way around. Surely I’m not the only one who sees the problem with this system.
Nativism, Isolation & Optional Wars of Interference
Looking back, I wonder if something happened to us, Post WWII. It seems we have convinced ourselves that our national interests entitle us to engage in optional wars of interference without apology. As a result, the United States has been guilty more than once of military adventures resembling “ready, fire aim.” With unfortunate outcomes. As a retired Marine officer, I’m intimately acquainted with a couple of those blunders. But post “all-volunteer force” we have collectively fallen asleep with respect to those wars, because (for most of us), nobody we know is obliged to go fight those wars. Today, less than 1% of all military eligible U.S. citizens actually serve.
I suspect the collective disengagement of Americans with respect to our place in the world traces back to the luxury of being able to ignore it. Too many of us have become self-absorbed and self-involved. The disillusioned minority who have fought our wars, have gotten sick of deploying every 12-18 months. For them, Mr. Trump’s promise of “fixing it” appealed. Never mind that “fixing” foreign policy is rarely as simple as the promise to do it.
Newsertainment
We have allowed the paid-stream media to sell their own opinions as “news” as a stand-in for reality. We now have liberal, moderate and conservative stovepipes, each trading their point of view for eyeballs and advertising dollars. If you compare what each of them say to the others, you can’t help wonder if they’re all on the same planet or living in the same time period.
Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan once observed “You’re entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts.” He was not the first to say something like that, but he and whoever may have said it first was right. And it’s still true. Weighing alternatives in a way likely to lead to thoughtful decisions is possible only in an intellectual environment where facts are indeed facts, rather than simply a perspective.
The paid-stream media has convinced far too many Americans that “how we feel” is more important than the facts contributing to them. “We do not see the world as it is,” Anaïs Nin once wrote, “we see it as we are.” (Emphasis mine). There’s a lot of truth in that. It’s human nature. But in a thoughtful world, we should be open to being convinced to see the world differently, based on facts.
It's Simple—But Hard
Democracy is a way of life. The equation enabling a vibrant if flawed democracy is simple but as we’re learning, increasingly hard especially in a diverse society. As America has grown, it has become increasingly more difficult to extract a meaningful consensus from our citizens. Especially in light of how the Mainstream Media treats events and how ubiquitous social media commentary on those same events has gotten.
Democracy demands ACTIVE Citizenship. Informed citizens, in other words with a general (if imperfect) understanding of where we are headed policy-wise, and with (again) an imperfect understanding of what the effects those policies might have.
Democracy also demands honest servants of the public trust. Stewards, in other words. For all the reasons outlined above and a number I didn’t mention, we lack both. It’s no ONE person’s fault, but collectively we have all contributed to an environment in which this is possible. We are the nation that has enabled the conditions under which this was possible. And it is now ours to fix. Just one broken-down, baggy-eyed old Marine’s take on it.
