Having just passed the one year anniversary of regime change in America, it seems a fair question to ask.
The short answer is no. It is easy to think that it’s all the fault of the individual that sits in the Oval Office, but it’s not. Sure all his toadies do what he says, but he is surrounded by true believers that influence his behavior in support of their agenda and his insanity. Then, there are the Republican members of Congress … unfortunately very few profiles in courage to be found here.
But wait, there’s more! Republican governors and legislatures that do his bidding and seek to maintain their power at the expense of others. Corporations that got what they wanted. Media, law firms and universities that caved in to pressure. Citizens that are afraid of losing something or focusing on their self-interest. And then there are those Americans that wring their hands or sit idly by and don’t do anything for whatever the reason.
America is not Germany during the 1930s or Russia during the early 2000s. We have three more years to go, but we have a chance to change this … to stop and turn around what is a slow but accelerating national suicide … and the potential destruction of the NATO alliance that has helped maintain international stability, the growth of democracy and American prosperity since 1949.
Commemorating Martin Luther King Day, the great historian Heather Cox Richardson wrote:
“You hear sometimes, now that we know the sordid details of the lives of some of our leading figures, that America has no heroes left.
When I was writing a book about the Wounded Knee Massacre, where heroism was pretty thin on the ground, I gave that a lot of thought. And I came to believe that heroism is neither being perfect, nor doing something spectacular. In fact, it’s just the opposite: it’s regular, flawed human beings choosing to put others before themselves, even at great cost, even if no one will ever know, even as they realize the walls might be closing in around them.
It means sitting down the night before D-Day and writing a letter praising the troops and taking all the blame for the next day’s failure upon yourself in case things went wrong, as General Dwight D. Eisenhower did.
It means writing in your diary that you “still believe that people are really good at heart,” even while you are hiding in an attic from the men who are soon going to kill you, as Anne Frank did.
It means signing your name to the bottom of the Declaration of Independence in bold script, even though you know you are signing your own death warrant should the British capture you, as John Hancock did.
It means defending your people’s right to practice a religion you don’t share, even though you know you are becoming a dangerously visible target, as Sitting Bull did.
Sometimes it just means sitting down, even when you are told to stand up, as Rosa Parks did.
None of those people woke up one morning and said to themselves that they were about to do something heroic. It’s just that when they had to, they did what was right.
On April 3, 1968, the night before the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated by a white supremacist, he gave a speech in support of sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee. Since 1966, King had tried to broaden the civil rights movement for racial equality into a larger movement for economic justice. He joined the sanitation workers in Memphis, who were on strike after years of bad pay and such dangerous conditions that two men had been crushed to death in garbage compactors.
After his friend Ralph Abernathy introduced him to the crowd, King had something to say about heroes: “As I listened to Ralph Abernathy and his eloquent and generous introduction and then thought about myself, I wondered who he was talking about.”
Dr. King told the audience that if God had let him choose any era in which to live, he would have chosen the one in which he had landed. “Now, that’s a strange statement to make,” King went on, “because the world is all messed up. The nation is sick. Trouble is in the land; confusion all around…. But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough, can you see the stars.” Dr. King said that he felt blessed to live in an era when people had finally woken up and were working together for freedom and economic justice.
He knew he was in danger as he worked for a racially and economically just America. “I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn’t matter…because I’ve been to the mountaintop…. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life…. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!”
People are wrong to say that we have no heroes left.
Just as they have always been, they are all around us, choosing to do the right thing, no matter what.”
A few days after professor Richardson’s piece appeared an equally important article was published in the Atlantic by outstanding scholar and columnist Robert Kagan. In it he said:
“The Trump administration’s National Security Strategy made it official: The American-dominated liberal world order is over. This is not because the United States proved materially incapable of sustaining it. Rather, the American order is over because the United States has decided that it no longer wishes to play its historically unprecedented role of providing global security. The American might that upheld the world order of the past 80 years will now be used instead to destroy it.
Americans are entering the most dangerous world they have known since World War II, one that will make the Cold War look like child’s play and the post–Cold War world like paradise. In fact, this new world will look a lot like the world prior to 1945, with multiple great powers and metastasizing competition and conflict. The U.S. will have no reliable friends or allies and will have to depend entirely on its own strength to survive and prosper. This will require more military spending, not less, because the open access to overseas resources, markets, and strategic bases that Americans have enjoyed will no longer come as a benefit of the country’s alliances. Instead, they will have to be contested and defended against other great powers.”
There are many difficult days ahead. I know this. On Saturday another innocent American citizen was murdered by ICE. But I don’t believe the end is upon us. Not yet, anyway. If we act and stand up for what’s right and good about America, including pressuring our members of Congress to do what’s necessary to stand by our friends and allies and honor our commitments to them, then there will be brighter days ahead. There’s a lot worth fighting for and it will take a lot of work by us all.
Will you help?
Stay well,
Michael