Together we have traveled a long road to be where we are today.”
— Thabo Mbeki
So where are we, exactly? That’s a loaded question if there ever was one; and made all the more difficult to answer by the fact that the more pieces you use to construct the picture, the more complex and unstable that answer becomes.
It may be an understatement to say that the United States in 2021 would be unrecognizable to the generations that it birthed in the 20th century, and certainly more so to those prior. The heartily-constituted, fiercely independent spirit that we have been told is the backbone of our national identity would be utterly lost in the land of inclusivity and the home of big corporate government. The altruistic ideals of the Washingtons, Jeffersons, and Franklins seem now more bedtime story than everyday reality; a convenient narrative constructed to assuage the concerns of the Everyman so that he may slumber peacefully and remain a productive member of this Great Society. The American Dream, indeed.
A nation-state that once boasted proudly of its own strengths. virtues, determination, and rugged individualism now appears cowed in the face of yet another invisible boogeyman that we are instructed must be feared by the expert faces on the ubiquitous screen. After all, our survival depends on it, doesn’t it?
Now, which boogeyman is it that we’re supposed to be living in terror of? Well, that would be the scourge of Communism, with it’s giant red fist poised and ready to crush the very life out of your friends and neighbors the moment their attention waivers. We must never let our guard down — no, wait a minute… sorry, that’s the copy from the Cold War. Fortunately, that particular brand of fearmongering seems to have gone the way of Reaganomics and the hula hoop… maybe.
It must be the terrorists, then! Those dangerous, militant extremists who seek to destroy the very fabric of our American reality with clearly back-ass-wards ideologies and enough explosives to level your favorite city block. They conspire in shacks and caves all over the world, always just beyond the reach of the most sophisticated surveillance apparatus the human mind has ever conceived. They don’t just want to kill you and your friends and neighbors; they want to wipe our great nation-state from the face of the earth. The horror! That narrative played pretty well for the first decade of this century, and was actually parroted by many for a time, but it seems to have lost its luster the further we have traveled from 2001.
It’s the microbes, then! Those damn microscopic pathogens that are just floating around in the air like they deserve to be there, waiting for the perfect moment to strike any one of us, and decimate our immune systems with their deadly agenda. And grandma, too; they especially love attacking grandmas. What a devious enemy. They can neither be seen nor heard, nor smelled nor touched nor tasted. This enemy is so ingenious that it makes itself appear invisible to all but the well-trained(and well-indoctrinated) eye. By god, if we weren’t constantly reminded of the dangers they pose, we may never even notice them at all.
A full decade on of this blitz of the dire consequences of ignoring these viruses/pathogens/diseases that have been with us since… well, since the beginning of known history, if the science can be believed. Have human beings never been sick before? How did we manage to survive the millenia that have passed up to this point without this knowledge? Are the cumulative tens(possibly hundreds) of thousands of years of prior human civilization just a happy accident? If that is to be the concensus, then we’ve got some excruciating work ahead of ourselves. Not to mention all the revising that will need to be done so that history can accurately reflect our nearly total current omniscience. Just make sure to leave enough gaps to fill in as needed.
Obviously, I’m over-simplifying the last fifty years or so of trauma that have been perpetrated on the American psyche. Countless volumes could be written exposing the intimate details of the propaganda that has been unleashed on an unsuspecting populace; and indeed, some already have.
So, again, where are we? It seems we’re in the same place that we’ve always been; it just looks different because of the angle. The same old people are still pulling the same old strings, and everyone else continues to dance to the same old tune… just like they always have. Does it even matter who is pulling the strings and who is dancing? Well… that, my friend, is a question that I can’t answer for you. But I do have a frame, and I can let you peek through it from time to time.
Grab your walking shoes. There’s a long road waiting for us.
