What happened to America? I wonder this when I think about the past. Being a history major I tend to do that.
I think about the past when industry grew and politicians listened, and when we didn’t owe China the financial equivalent of Alaska. What was once a nation of progress, industry and ingenuity is now a country of dystopianasm, corruption and false hope. Of course then I wonder if we really ever changed.
Politicians have been a problem in America since the Founding Fathers, a necessary evil that become more evil with each passing election, it seems. Democratic waffling and Republican hypocrisy now was merely Democratic racism and Republican corporate corruption 100 years ago.
If things have never really changed, then America is simply going through its newest phase of corruption and dystopianism.
So, where is the America of the past, of the Founding Fathers? The America of progress, hope, ingenuity and industry? Maybe it’s gone. Maybe the new America – one of party bickering and change without regards to the people – is the future of America. In an America that prefers cheap products to jobs and cheaper customer service to quality help, maybe the America of old is gone forever.
As much as I want to believe the past was somehow better, it was also in many ways worse; The racism, the hate, the fear, the lack of Star Wars. Of course now we hate and fear Arabs instead of blacks or communists, we fear Socialism instead of communism, we hate the other party rather than the blacks, the Jews, the Catholics, when we don’t still hate them.
Maybe though, maybe hate is too strong a word for what we have now. Maybe instead of hating the other party we’re angry because we know our party is no better so we hate that which we dislike when we peer into our own lives.
The lack of hate could be progress in itself, as it means we have changed to a point where we don’t hate. That might be the key, then. The America of the past and the America of now aren’t better or worse than each other, they’re just different. They were both good and bad in their own ways.
Instead of worrying about the America of the past, we must worry about the America we have now, the one with two wars, a poor economy, and a health care bill that’s useless and possibly unconstitutional.
The politicians don’t listen anymore except when the people are united. Not united like now, where they’re anti- or pro health care reform, but when they unite as a single voice and say “we want reform, and here’s how we want it!” If the politicians can’t fix things themselves then we’ll just have to spoon feed change to them, and if they don’t like it they can run for General Secretary.
This of course requires the people to stand together, but it has happened in the past, and it can happen again. Maybe that is America, a place where the people can unite as one against injustice or corruption no matter the source. America was founded by the people, of the people, and for the people. Maybe it still is.
