My Hope for November 2022

 WARNING - The following is a political rant...

Returning to the US after spending any extended amount of time abroad is always an interesting experience. I make it a point when I am back in London to avoid watching American media. I watch BBC instead of CNN or MSNBC. I read The Evening Standard and the Metro instead of the Huffington Post. The Daily Mash instead of The Onion, etc. etc.

Now to be fair, the United States is not alone in having bizarre social and cultural quirks that make other countries scratch their heads in bewilderment. When you look at the complete and utter dumpster fire that is the UK’s xenophobia-driven decision to economically shoot itself in the face by leaving the European Union; Aspects of our own American weirdness can seem mild by comparison.

But this past week was the annual Conservative Political Action Conference. (CPAC) Which in recent years has morphed into something of a crazy Comic-Con for the fringiest of the far right fringe of American politics. Where the ideas and attitudes that our nation as fought wars to defeat are now championed as the new conservative gospel.

Watching the Cirque du Insanity that is CPAC unfold I find myself lamenting the loss of “American Greatness.”

In the space of less than one generation we have gone from being a nation that builds, to being a nation that buys. A nation where we have elevated narcissism (oh, sorry, I mean “Social Media Influence”) as a valid career choice. Where a nation that is descended almost entirely from immigrants, has convinced ourselves that some people are somehow less “American” than others.

The nation that in less than one century created technology that reshaped the world and fundamentally changed our understanding of the universe, now wages war against innovation because it might impact the profit margins of specific industries and corporations. The country that gave the world the polio vaccine now gets into fistfights in Walmart because vaccines infringe on “freedom” … or something.

The nation that created the idea of the social safety net after the great depression, is now a place where you can go bankrupt trying to pay for health care. Where death by poverty is considered a natural cause. The same nation that enshrined personal freedom into the first ten amendments to our constitution, is now a place that will force a rape or incest victim to bear her attacker’s child. All while claiming the right to own a military grade assault weapon is sacrosanct, and if such a weapon is used to slaughter children in their classroom… That is just the price we must pay for that “freedom”.

The nation that led a global fight to defeat fascism, and then for half a century faced down anti-democratic totalitarianism, demanding the wall it built through a city be torn down. That nation is now a place where domestic terrorists who tried to overthrow our democracy are lauded at CPAC as oppressed heroes. And fascism is cheered as being “Christian Nationalism.”

The nation that inspired the world to embrace representative democracy has in the space of less that a decade. become one where one side of the political spectrum touts the end of that democracy as "Making America Great Again."

The Republican Party is now the embodiment of the idea that facts no longer matter. Where if you lose an election, just keep lying about it and incite an armed mob to attack your opponents. The idea that any science that threatens the bottom line of campaign donors must be attacked. History that doesn’t fit a pre-conceived narrative must be expunged from textbooks.

Where the right to own an assault rifle is seen as more important than a grade-schoolers right to life, let alone liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Where a woman’s right to control her own body is less protected than a corporations right to give unlimited amounts of money to politicians.

All of this, has made America... Small.

Yet despite that litany of rancid stains on the fabric of our nation. I still truly believe that we are far more potential than we are actualized. The United States of America remains, as Benjamin Franklin once described it; “rougher, simpler, more violent, more enterprising, less refined. We are new nationality.”

The potential of that remains, I believe, to be truly limitless.

But to reach that potential, to become once again that “shining city on a hill, we need to remember who we are. What we saw on display at CPAC, what we hear emanating from the dark cesspools of outlets like Newsmax, OAN and the likes of Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Alex Jones, this is NOT who we are.

It is my hope that as we go to polls in this year’s midterm elections, we embrace the better angels our national nature and remember.