We’re in the middle of a year long celebration of America at 250 years old. There are celebrations and events across the country marking the creation of one of the world’s greatest experiments, a democratic government that answers to those who are governed. We grew into the country the world looked up to and counted on for help in times of need. We were always there, leading the world through world wars, helping those countries through natural disasters, famine, disease and helping them gain their own freedom. We’ve gone through our own terrible times, slavery, the Civil War, the Great Depression, World War I and II, the fight for civil rights, mistreatment of Native Americans, a presidential assassination, Vietnam, Watergate, 9/11 to name just a few.
The last 25 plus years have stressed the fabric of America like few periods in our history. 9/11 was like a bullet in the heart of the country. But our response lead down the path to disastrous wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The housing crisis in 2008 shook our financial security. The election of the first Black president started the festering of our politics. The trauma of Trump has brought us to the crisis of leadership that we’d never seen before. He’s managed to deceive the country twice into putting him in charge. He’s proven incompetent, delusional, and worst of all, dangerous. He surrounded himself with sycophants who are afraid to challenge even his most bizarre behavior. We all know the list, the disastrous war in Iran, the economic damage we all are living with as result, the ridiculous ballroom mess where he took upon himself to destroy half the most iconic symbol of America to build a garish ballroom, the creation of the algae filled Reflecting Pool that must have Lincoln looking down from his chair wondering what the hell is going on. This was part of the stage for Marian Anderson who performed the Lincoln Memorial Concert for an integrated crowd of 75,000 in 1939 and Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech.
Trump has sent ICE agents into American streets to brutally roundup illegal immigrants with bullets and clubs as part of his racist philosophy and trying to get the Supreme Court to overturn birth right citizenship. A country can only be as good as the leaders it elects. There are very few Lincolns and Franklin Roosevelts. They are examples of what we should be crying out for at this critical time in our history. The rest of the world is angry and anxious about what happened to their reliable leader, the shining star that was there to light the way.
We get the leaders and the country we deserve. We are responsible for the continued success of the grand American experiment. We are in a fragile period of our 250 years. We must act to find our way back from this wayward path. Lincoln warned us in a speech in Springfield, Illinois in 1838 as a congressman. “At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.” The future is up to us.
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