This commentary is by Bob Stannard of Manchester, an author, musician and former state legislator and lobbyist.
I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or my grandchildren’s time — when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.
The dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30-second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance. — Carl Sagan, 1995
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One has to marvel at the vision of Carl Sagan who 26 years predicted where our country was headed. It appears as though we have arrived.
Look at where we once were as a nation and what we have devolved into. There was a time, not all that long ago, that we admired our presidents. When President Franklin D. Roosevelt — a president who was quite popular but still reviled by some — died in office, his vice president, Harry S. Truman had to step up. Truman had been kept out of the loop and was, some might say, completely ill-prepared to serve as president. But step up he did and Americans united around their new president.
Our nation has a history of uniting around its presidents when the president puts the country first. Things started to change right around the time of Ronald Reagan. Reagan was a popular president who garnered a lot of support, even though he worked to undermine the middle class.
When we elected our first Black president, we thought that maybe the time had come for America to put its differences behind us and come back together. When the Senate Minority Leader, Mitch McConnell, declared that he was determined to make Barack Obama a one-term president, it was clear to us all that the divisions that have percolated below the surface of America for hundreds of years were about to boil over.
Thankfully, McConnell failed and Obama served two terms. Then America took a terrible right turn.
It didn’t take long for Obama’s successor to slash open the old wounds that had separated America in its youth. The one thing — and perhaps the only one — this man was good at was pitting us against each other. He had a divide-and-conquer mentality and it has worked better than any efforts to unify America.
America is nearly as divided today as it was during the Civil War. As Sagan pointed out 26 years ago, we are getting our news in 10-second sound bites, or worse, from social media. Today it’s difficult to discern truth from falsehood. To compound this problem, our enemies are working very hard to flood social media with disinformation that many Americans are more than willing to lap right up.
Take the pandemic, for instance. In any other period of American history, we would have fought this virus with a united front. It would have been unpatriotic to not do so. However, when the former president constantly harped that the virus was not a problem, would just disappear, or could be treated with hydroxychloroquine (it can’t), then some Americans began to have doubts. Add to this the fact that our leader, in Mussolini-like fashion, ripped a mask off his face and immediately politicized the virus.
Right now, today, we are still arguing over whether we should wear a mask and get vaccinated. Americans have been receiving vaccinations for many decades without so much as a peep, but not today. No, today we have to have knock-down, drag-out fights over getting vaccinated and wearing a mask.
Sadly, many of those who adamantly opposed doing either are now finding themselves in hospitals gasping for breath; some are dying.
It didn’t have to be this way. America needs to find a way back to a time when we elected honest people with integrity to serve. It’s hard to imagine how this will happen when a large minority of people still believe in the lies being perpetrated by the former president and his party.
It is what it is, but think about this: If we can’t come together to fight a virus that’s killed over 600,000 Americans, how on earth can we ever unite to fight climate change, homelessness, poverty and a host of other really serious problems that are now on our doorstep?
Maybe the answer is that we can’t. Is that where we’re headed? If so, buckle up, because you may not like where that road leads.
