Midnight in America

*

Our great abiding national myth is this: We are a chosen people who threw off the yoke of our colonial oppressors to forge a new nation out of the wilderness by pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps, rugged individualists who tamed a continent through sheer grit and determination. A meritocracy where anyone, no matter their color or creed, can rise as far as their talent and gumption takes them. Furthermore, we have welcomed "huddled masses yearning to breathe free" from the far-flung nations around the globe. Here, we told them, here in America is where you too can taste a freedom that grows nowhere else on Earth. 

This myth suggests a unity of purpose that utterly belies basic human nature. We are a savage species; distrusting, selfish, greedy, wasteful, often barbaric. Our "better angels" are almost exclusively reserved for people who belong to our same tribe, whether that tribe be religious, political, or ethnic in nature—more often than not some combination of the three. 

American history is replete with endless examples of this savagery even if our textbooks are often silent. Slavery and the Civil War get a benign chapter or two, but I don't recall learning about the Indian Wars, the Chinese Exclusion Act (legislation conveniently enacted after thousands of Chinese helped build our western railroads), nothing about the exploitation of a labor underclass (save the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire) or countless violent management responses to union organizing going back more than a century. The list goes on: Jim Crow legislation, lynching, "Irish Need Not Apply," the Tulsa Race Massacre, the Bonus Army, Emmett Till, the My Lai Massacre, Shock and Awe in Iraq. 

And yet many Americans (not all, never all) in every generation since the first shots fired at Lexington and Concord in 1775 have been galvanized to march, fight, and die for the cause of human freedom—for self-government and Abolition, against corporate greed and fascism, for equal rights and equal opportunity, against an exclusionary America for the privileged Few, but rather for the struggling Many. 

The United States declared its independence 244 years ago, but have been truly united for a mere three years and nine months—from December 7, 1941 until September 1, 1945. That's it, that's all. Not very long. Before and after World War II we have been distrustful of each other, selfish with our abundance, greedy and wasteful of our resources, often barbaric against those we differ with or who stand in our way. Of course, we're not alone. It's simply human nature. 

And now the United States and the world has begun its third decade in the Age of Polarization. The dawn of this era neatly coincided with the beginning of the Internet Age. No coincidence there, just a Venn  diagram of two perfectly overlapping circles where objective truth has been exploded by anyone who possessed the amorality to seize an opportunity to monetize human nature. Exploit DISTRUST by highlighting our differences, not our more numerous similarities. Leverage SELFISHNESS by claiming that granting marginalized groups equal rights would actually reduce one's own (hogwash). Ennoble GREED as a desirable trait, because we all deserve to be rich, consequences to workers and the environment be damned. Disregard WASTE and GRAFT in high places as simply the cost of doing business. Lastly (but realistically, first), fetishize BARBARISM as the inevitable and preferable alternative to compromise and reconciliation, and glorify VIOLENCE until it becomes the predictable result of human conflict. 

And here we are. This scourge year of 2020 is nearly over and we should finally be seeing ourselves and the wider world with more clarity. And yet we are blind, unaware that we are all being played by a media ecosystem that is happily dividing us for nothing more than its own enrichment. Don't kid yourself, they don't believe a word they are saying. At the same time, Silicon Valley has blithely absolved itself of any responsibility by claiming that its social media platforms are nothing more than a "marketplace for ideas." Bullshit. If they were truly just that, their software algorithms would not intentionally be designed to push our clicks, reads, and views down more and more extreme ideological rabbit holes.  And yet they are, and they do. Whatever idealism may have existed at the outset for these social media titans doesn't exist anymore. Their corporate boardrooms, where decisions are made on a quarterly basis, have only their shareholders' bottom line as the one urgent agenda item. 

Meanwhile, Americans are sicker, poorer, angrier, and more frightened than they've been since the Great Depression. Unquestionably, we as citizens bear some of the responsibility. But is it really all our fault? Is our collective and growing desperation due solely to our own negligence and ignorance? Or have we been conditioned for the last fifty years, subtly and relentlessly, to accept our lot in life, to stumble along from one paycheck to the next? Stagnant wages, obscene and widespread student debt, mediocre healthcare, a "wellness" pharmaceutical industry we've become addicted to, systemic racism in urban policing, a crumbling infrastructure, and a perpetually gridlocked government goaded along by cable news mouthpieces who shout that those other Americans are the enemy, avocado toast elites in their diverse cities or beer-drinking, truck-driving yokels in their homogenous small towns.

Contrary to the popular saying so much in vogue these days, "This is not who we are," this is, in fact, who we have always been. We are a messy people with a messy history. Occasionally we have harnessed greatness, but also vulgarity in equal amounts. Both in conflicting lockstep, side by side for two and a half centuries. And I would also add that we are, like children, GULLIBLE. 

Perhaps there is a way forward for us. Or maybe we should simply stop looking. Looking requires exhibiting qualities that ultimately would have to benefit the common good and promote the general welfare, not to mention believing facts over fiction, no matter how hard facts may be to accept or how mundane the truth actually is. I'm not sure we have those qualities in us anymore, though I know we once did. The alternative, however, seems plain. We keep retreating to our comfortable, hate-filled, utterly coerced and manipulated corners, and become a place we thought we would never live in—Midnight in America.   

*Coincidentally, the image at the top of this post was an editorial cartoon by famed political cartoonist Bill Mauldin, drawn the day after President Kennedy was assassinated, which occurred 57 years ago today.