Yes, Virginia, this IS who we are.
Newsflash. Our American face-palm ain’t just because of our terrible, horrible, no good, very bad year.
“This is not who we are.” Barack Obama’s wistful refrain to a country, who once believed it was the ‘shining city on the hill’, seems today more fairy tale trope, than truth. If these last four years have taught us anything, it’s that few things are what they seem or once believed, especially about ourselves. This chaos. This division and violence. This easy belief in lies and misinformation. This lack of respect for one another. “This isn’t who we are”? Yes, it sorta is.
If you told someone, intent on racing directly to Candyland Castle on the first date, “Um, no, that’s not who I am”, they should step the heck back. When, as a lifetime, mindless voter of my family’s party of choice, I suddenly realized its values no longer reflected ‘who I am’, I pivoted to a better fit. I also recognized that those simple words could no longer address the giant gap between what we hold to be our ideals and today’s glaring reality. Doing so is not only awkward, but often downright delusional.
This year has been a hot mess, to put it mildly. As an out of control pandemic tragically took the lives of 255,000 people (so far), many Americans succeed in shooting themselves in the foot. In fact, this year was a stellar example of both the best of America as well as a cornucopia of Karens and Kens behaving badly. We have somehow forgotten the concept of civility, of thinking before we speak and even, practicing what we preach. While core kindness and generosity were so visible in food banks and food kitchens, a frightening mob mentality of death threats and intimidation was also alive and well. Are you there, George Orwell?
“It isn’t what we say that defines us, but what we do.” Jane Austen
It was a year of split screen indictments of who we are. Healthcare heroes showed incredible courage every day, even as we watched an unarmed 70 man shoved to the sidewalk, bleeding from his head. Entitled, angry people had raging hissy fits over wearing masks, while others threaten to kidnap and execute a governor, who had the audacity to want to keep them safe. Shut down in quarantine, we made sourdough bread and home-schooled kids while peaceful protesters were subject to tear gas and armed militia to enable a presidential photo opp. We watched, in stunned shock, as a black man died from a knee pressed on his neck; then again as people of all colors and cultures across the nation, protested its historical continuance. We take our place, on one side or the other, of a rampant gun culture whose love of a misunderstood Second Amendment has been so radicalized that it’s become completely normal shop in Walmart or Dairy Queen accessorized with long guns. (Hey, if you need a gun to get a cone, you have way bigger problems!)
Some would say we are lost, searching for what we once thought ourselves to be. Yet, we heard a revered war hero disparaged because he was a captive, while other brave vets were called losers and suckers. And we did nothing. Gun sales are off the charts this year. In fact, there are more guns in circulation than people. Assault weapons don’t seem the best way to kill a virus, so why the neanderthal need to protect yourself so ferociously from your fellow human? More than ever before, we’ve seen fear and loathing at its best, heard quasi-religious politicians pandering to the demands of a base who hardly exhibits true Christian values. We passively accepted Old Glory becoming co-opted by one side of the partisan divide who believe it’s their rightful icon as true patriots and ‘believers’. It’s all part of the seething political polarization that totally upended our equilibrium and created alienation, disappointment and skepticism of friend and family alike.
“Ultimately, this is about basic decency. . . It’s about who we are as a people — and who we want to be.” Barack Obama
Such hopeful words. Unfortunately, they sound almost foreign today. Yet, this primal scream year also had a flip side. We saw passionate, pink-capped Women’s Marches across the globe, as well as multitudes of young people walking in bold solidarity to protest gun violence. We came together in protest of the forcible separation of families at the border and children isolated in cages, most of whom will never see their broken-hearted parents again. The greatest irony is that this proud country itself is a nation of immigrants. Then again, despite the regal Lady in the Harbor’s invite, we haven’t exactly had a stellar history of welcoming new groups to our shores. The statue in the harbor boasts “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free”, but, as a welcoming committee we’ve been pretty tolerance challenged. As my own Italian grandparents would attest, generations of immigrants were portrayed as “ignorant, insular, superstitious, lazy, prone to crime”. Even their food was seen as alien but since I can’t imagine a world without pasta and pizza, I’m glad we got over that one.
“Everyone was pitted against each other; conflict ruled the realm
All our devotions and temperaments are pulled from different wells
We seem to easily forget we are made of the same cells.” Alanis Morrisette,
Have we all been transformed — or just revealed? Are we kind, tolerant, loving and generous — or nasty, spiteful, racist, misogynistic? I believe, we are born wit the ability, under the right or wrong circumstances, to become both true and the opposite of our nature. If, as many believe, the fish rots from the head, will a new leader guide us back to sanity and our better angels? Misinformation has proliferated from the occasional crackpot theory into a full-blown rabbit hole of lies. The conspiracy theories, plots and cabals, if not so patently absurd and dangerous, would be a laugh riot. But they are far from funny. Many staunch believers of the most grotesque, QAnon, have snowballed into mainstream millions, several are running for Congress. Blending paranoid concepts with long held resentments and prejudices, became the perfect path to belief in things like chemtrails — over climate change. It seems fact-based reality is an endangered species.
So yes, what you see today IS who we are, an often reluctantly endless Jerry Springer show. Not all of us, and not all the time, but enough to fear for the future, not just for our country but our collective morality and soul. Sometimes it feels a lot like living in an Ayn Rand novel, but with PT Barnum in the center ring. Indeed, the most insidious virus rages inside the House — on Pennsylvania Ave, and to ever find our true north, we need to clean House. We also need to get out of our own way and take a good look at the magical thinking that allowed us to believe the fantasyland of ‘Great’ again. The glaring daily display of divisiveness, mistrust, racism and fear is anything but great yet history tells us it’s hardly a one-off either. We can blame the other side but the truth is, at their essence, they hold just as much fear and hope as we do. And we would be less than honest if we didn’t admit that this land, despite our best intent, was never a sanitized, angelic national portrait. It’s hardly the first time we’ve lost our collective minds, acted with malice or stubborn mistreatment, even with the most virtuous intent — and it won’t be the last.
“If nothing changes, nothing changes.”
Who are we? We are inclusive and racist. We are welcoming and xenophobic. We are kind and spiteful. We are all colors of the human palette with temperaments, failings, problems and talents to match. We yearn for a better future even as we long for a mythical past. We are all part of the American experiment, though at present, the jury is out that it’s really working. It might be time to realize that “Make America Great Again” is a broken political slogan that has only spotlighted the insecurity, frustration and passion in all of us. We will never be great as a country, until we remember that our country is ‘of the people, by the people and for the people.’ Not the economy, the infrastructure, or politicians. ‘Great’ begins and ends with us, America’s people. When we, individual and together, choose to do and be better, when we make the necessary renovations of character, we will truly be able to say ‘That is not who we are”.
“America is not the greatest country in the world. We sure used to be. We stood up for what was right! We fought for moral reasons, we passed and struck down laws for moral reasons. We waged wars on poverty, not poor people. We sacrificed, we cared about our neighbors, we put our money where our mouths were, and we never beat our chest. We built great big things, made ungodly technological advances, explored the universe, cured diseases, and cultivated the world’s greatest artists and the world’s greatest economy. We reached for the stars, and we acted like men. We aspired to intelligence; we didn’t belittle it; it didn’t make us feel inferior. We didn’t identify ourselves by who we voted for in the last election, and we didn’t scare so easy. And we were able to be all these things and do all these things because we were informed. By great men, men who were revered. The first step in solving any problem is recognizing there is one. America is not the greatest country in the world anymore — but it can be.”
From The Newsroom in answer to why America is the Greatest Country in the World.
