The New Normal

I’ve lived a long and productive life, and I’m happy that I lived when I did.

Many things have changed during my seventy-six years on Earth, some good and some bad. Technological innovation has made life much different, for sure, allowing men to walk on the Moon and equipping every citizen to manage their life with a global communication device in his or her hip pocket.

A significant downside of the Digital Age, in my opinion, has been the creation of “social media”. It, too easily, allows people to share cruel gossip and communicate/pass along misinformation to the extent that no one seems to know what is truthful anymore. Facts should matter, but evidence-free beliefs seem to be the coin of the realm in modern society.

When I was growing up, education was valued, teachers were respected, and scientists were revered. My parents’ generation had survived the pain and hardship of the Great Depression and World War II and imparted to their children a strong work ethic, a “can do” attitude, and a belief in the American Dream. Consequently, we Baby Boomers were primed to take the ball and run with it, to break down barriers, and make the United States the envy of all nations.

I am proud to say that this was largely achieved. Of course, America was working as a team in those days, back when our elected officials spent most of their time working to solve problems rather than blaming people for them. A good example is the Interstate Highway System, which required the cooperation of government at the local, state, and Federal levels. Back then, compromise was an essential component of a politician’s tool kit: give a little to get a lot.

That concept, of elected officials identifying and solving problems for the benefit of all, seems outdated in modern society.

Partisanship (“My way or the highway!” idealism) has replaced the realpolitik model (pragmatism) that guided our generation. Achieving what we can (possible), rather than what we want (often impossible) has been replaced by an attitude that anything proposed by the “other” political party is a non-starter. Consequently, and particularly in the halls of Congress, nothing gets accomplished other than insults being shouted across the aisle.

Modern American society appears to have accepted this model of political behavior, which undermines our democratic system of government. It also defeats the idea of a “united” States of America, as elected officials in some states and regions blatantly oppose the will of most American citizens. Sabotaging the efforts of an elected President has become sport for the “out-of-power” political party.

Call me an old-fashioned skeptic, but I can’t seem to understand how America advances the ball of progress using this incessant tug-of-war approach. As someone once said, “If you’re not advancing, you’re falling behind”. I’m not sure that our country has the luxury of taking a few decades off, resting on our laurels. Other countries will step up: just ask the Romans, who took their eye off the ball.

I am worried that the Gen X’s and Z’s and so forth are squandering what has been given them.

Elections have been proven to be virtually error- and cheat-proof over our Nation’s history at all levels of government. Nevertheless, a large number of American citizens believe the opposite, not because of evidence but, rather, because they read the propaganda about “stolen” elections on social media.

Similarly, vaccines have been proven to be one of civilization’s greatest achievements, saving millions of lives every year. We Baby Boomers were the first generation to benefit from the miracle of vaccination; I can recall visions from my early days of schoolmates who suffered from polio, whooping cough, diphtheria, measles, mumps, smallpox, chicken pox, etc., before vaccinations were required to attend public school.

Amazingly, due in part from crazy skeptics with loud voices, a preposterous “anti-vax” sentiment is alive and well in today’s America.

This peculiarity is part and parcel of a modern political attitude that denigrates science. Half of American citizens believe that “global warming” is a hoax, while 97 percent of the world’s scientists confirm that it is very real. During the Covid-19 pandemic, large numbers of our citizens rebelled at local, State, and Federal measures adopted to curtail the spread of the virus, preferring to believe the advice of non-scientific “experts”, including (amazingly) the then-President of the United States.

The mysterious “They say” has, in the social media age, become more believed by young folks than facts imparted by bonified experts. Teachers are under siege, as well, suspected of imparting their own political views upon students in their care. More and more children are being home-schooled, which means that they are being educated by amateurs and that what they are being taught is colored by the political/religious attitudes of their parents, right or wrong.

Maybe this is the future of education: no qualified teaching, everyone is on their own to determine how things work/how to separate fact from fiction, etc. All I can say is that, when I was young, I needed and appreciated competent instruction from professionals. My parents were smart, good people who imparted what they knew (or believed) to me. My Dad, who was a wonderful father, was a racist because he was brought up when that was the norm in America. Should he have instructed me in race relations? Probably not. But he loved reading and imparted that love in me.

There are political forces at work in America that don’t want our teachers at any level to talk about the dark aspects of our history, like slavery or the treatment of our Native Indian peoples. On the other hand, the same politicians want the Christian religion to be taught in schools, even though religious belief (of any kind) is on the downswing in America, many God-fearing folks in America are not Christian, and our Constitution specifically provides that citizens have the right to believe or not believe in whatever Almighty that they choose.

Is it beneficial for our young kids to be taught at home or at a public school that the Civil War was about honor, States’ Rights, or compromise… rather than slavery? Should the Civil War even be discussed? I think it should, for as the saying goes, “Those who don’t learn history are doomed to repeat it.”

But what do I know… I’m an old fart.

It used to be that our two main political parties stood for something, with platform positions on social issues, taxation, the economy, geopolitics, and so forth. The Republican Party, for example, was all about economic growth, reducing government regulations, lowering taxes, law and order, and opposing undemocratic regimes. I voted Republican in many elections.

The last Republican President (who is again running in 2024) favored punitive tariffs against international trading partners (which effectively punished American consumers), appointed Supreme Court Justices who have taken away women’s rights over their own bodies and allowed  citizens to arm themselves with military grade weapons, gave rich Americans a permanent tax break which will be paid for by middle class citizens over the coming decades, and praised dictators of several Communist regimes such as Russia, China, and North Korea. He also badmouthed America’s electoral system, proclaiming that all elections are rigged… except those that he wins.

Candidate Trump is also declaring that immigrants from other countries are “poisoning the blood” of America. This is the Adolph Hitler mantra that was used to justify sending 6 million Jews to the incinerators. Curiously, the Trump wives who carried his children were both immigrants from eastern Europe: Ivana Zelnickova from Czechoslovakia and Melanija Knavs from Slovenia. Trump’s mother, Maryanne Macleod, immigrated to the U.S. from Scotland. Does that make Donald Trump’s and his children’s blood “poisoned”? This whole campaign issue doesn’t make any sense because every human being in the United States of America is descended from immigrants, even our indigenous Indians who came here from Asia. That means that all of us have “poisoned” blood, even the White Nationalists that Mr. Trump is keen to suck up to.

Surprisingly (at least to me), former President Trump is the leading Republican candidate in the 2024 contest.

How is it that a guy who doesn’t really believe in government, democracy, the Rule of Law, or our Constitution can be qualified to be the Chief Executive, particularly considering his poor performance the last time and his support of an attempted coup in January 2021?

Why would Republican voters support a candidate whose main occupation these days is fighting civil and criminal charges in numerous state and Federal courts?

It increasingly appears that the Republican Party faithful are going to vote in November for an authoritarian whose public “platform” features vengeance upon everyone who has had the audacity to criticize him in the past. One of Trump’s lawyers testified in court last week that a President has the authority to assassinate opposition American political leaders, something that the Founding Fathers would have found obscene.

One would think that modern American voters, of all political parties, would uniformly oppose this barbaric threat, as it would give current President Biden the authority to have former President Trump executed, along with other Republican politicians, for badmouthing him. Has the former President considered this?

But, in this new world in which we live, evidently a large swath of the American electorate is okay with this disturbing scenario.

George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Teddy Roosevelt are probably turning over in their graves.

As a four-year veteran of the armed services, and a long career as a public servant, I am appalled that it has come to this: throwing in the towel on American democracy.

It’s the New Normal, I suppose and, fortunately, I won’t be around long enough to endure much of it.