In my own cynical way, inauguration day reminds me of New
Year’s Eve – it’s a huge non-event. As
you count down to midnight, you are filled with optimism, excitement, resolve,
trepidation, whatever – there’s this shared expectation that upon that fateful
stroke of the clock, the world is going to change drastically. It never does. You wake up the next morning, bleary eyed and
(if you’re in ohio) the world outside is just as grey as it was the night
before. The resolutions you’ve made for
yourself, full of promise and hope are suddenly just more items on your to-do
list and not the inspirational dreams you’ve convinced yourself that they would
be.
Inauguration day has been the same for much of my life. Approximately 50% of general population
feels “This is the end of an era of goodness, development, change, hope,
equality, financial prosperity and the end of the world as we know it. America is going to the dogs.” The other 50% is crying out “finally we have
someone with some sense in the driver’s seat, the country will finally be
headed in the right direction, everything will be better now.” In my experience, neither group has ever been
fully correct.
As a child, a new president was not a thing that
mattered. A new face would show up next
to flags in some places and my parents would be either glad that the person
they voted for was now president or upset that he wasn’t for approximately a
day, but it would not keep them from their true calling in life, which was
clearly to push me on the swings. I
returned to school to face the same expectations, same curriculum and ….?
I have reached the age where new presidents matter. Being in the army, the new political head of our country is my
boss’s boss approximately fifty levels up.
While I don’t anticipate running into him or her at the Christmas party,
decisions that this president makes effect my life on a day to day level. Where I live, what I wear, who I treat. Where I deploy. Where I could die… and why I die. Now that I *get* to pay my share into the
government coffer, I have surprisingly strong opinions about how much and how
it is used… and so the president matters.
Impractically, these are not the aspects of this particular
president closest to my heart. The
president shapes the American culture – and the American culture shapes all of us. Culture is a complex organism with a lot of
competing value systems, voices and influences.
The president is not the sole influence, but he is certainly one of the
loudest. The rhetoric he uses to discuss
education, the diction he uses to describe women, the very manner in which he
speaks to other people – these things set a tone for the country and much like
throwing a rock into a pond, have reverberations far beyond their original
target. The fact that our new president
seems unaware of this reach is distressing to me. Many things about him are distressing to
me. I fear that if our newly elected
president is a brash bully who belittles intelligence, scoffs at experts and
judges people by their appearance instead of their merits then our culture as a
whole will begin to do the same.
Contrary to the mindset of athletically blessed and intelligently
lacking bullies running high schools across the country aspiration, knowledge,
brilliance and inspiration are to be celebrated. These qualities are by far the best hope for
our future.
The will of the people has spoken and Mr. Trump is now our
president. I don’t claim the luxury to
say “not my president”, because he is - I am a part of the system that elected
him and the one that elected him democratically at that. Sure, the system may be flawed, but he has
come to power and we can’t claim to believe in free elections and then
immediately turn on the result. On the
other hand I cannot step back and wash my hands of the situation and expect to
be innocent of any consequences. We are
still the country that enslaved an entire race and imprisoned an ethnic group
during the second world war. Our current
point is not our lowest. There was
rampant drug use and gun violence last week and it will still be there next
week. Children are hungry, schools are underfunded and often times we are too
busy shouting about it to simply do what we can.
I am an American.
I am proud to be an American.
We are still the country that was founded by a group of
intellectuals on democratic principles with the goal of equality. To quote the Newsroom (Want to feel hopeful
about being an American again – watch something by Sorkin – the Newsroom and
the West Wing fix everything except procrastination) “America is the only
country that has said over and over and over again that we can do better.”
(Ref.)
We know ourselves by our “American spirit”, our freedom, our
democracy, our commitment to values.
Around the world, identifying oneself as an American evokes different
imagery. An already unpleasant
caricature is likely to become more grossly proportioned as we shout and riot
and loot.
The world isn’t wrong about us, they are just reacting to
what they see and what they’ve known.
Why should we settle for that? Be
better, do better and change the stereotype.
Inauguration day SHOULD be a non-event. The changing of the political head does not
in itself change the dreams, passions, culture, beliefs and spirit of the
American people. AS john locke said,
the government should be afraid of its people, not the other way around. If
the new attitude of this country is defeatist and cruel with the outlook that
things “could not get worse” then that is the seed we have sown and we have to
reap that harvest. Instead, embrace this
change, encourage your neighbor, protect your rights, read more, volunteer
more, learn more. Discussion and open
communication will always be our best weapons against fear and violence.
As always, the
easiest way to make this world a better place is to simply get out and do
it.
