Bequeathing something of substance to the inheritors of tomorrow.
America has had little opportunity in recent years to enjoy that which our predecessors fought so hard to provide just a few decades ago.
Whether it was overcoming a worldwide depression that threatened to create a permanent underclass of people in the most prosperous country on the planet; fighting World War II to defeat a Nazi Germany hellbent on world domination and the genocide of millions of people deemed not “human” enough for the likes of Adolf Hitler; freezing the Soviet Union into submission during a Cold War that lasted 40 years and threatened freedom-loving people around the globe; or taking calculated risks with the U.S. Treasury to prevent a collapse of our capitalistic system in America during the Great Recession just 14 years ago; Americans have always stepped up when it was their time to defend and preserve our democracy and our way of life.
Today, we find ourselves in a different kind of fight. It is a challenge to democracy the likes of which this nation has not confronted since just before the Civil War, which, as we all know, did not end well for half the country — neither the half that fought against enslaving other human beings nor the half of the United States that rationalized slavery for the sake of a dollar.
There is an unrelenting angst that grips every corner of the United States as religion, politics, profit motives and personal animus define our everyday existence. That unease gives no one a rest, no one a chance to take a breath, and no one an opportunity to pursue the life, liberty and happiness that our Founding Fathers conceived of two and a half centuries ago.
And yet, most Americans still pursue the idea of perfecting our union.
Nowhere is the personification of American optimism more evident these days than in our family celebrations.
I recognized as much this past week at a birthday dinner for my beautiful, talented, brilliant, loving grandchild. Actually, every grandparent can fill in their own adjectives, but the point is the same. We celebrate the birthdays of the young people because they hold the promise of our future.
As I thought about the future that my generation is leaving the newest Americans, I couldn’t help but cringe when I considered the gun violence in our schools and the change in our climate that is making uninhabitable cities and communities that just a few years ago were thriving as were their prospects. Those are just two, albeit extremely large, challenges facing young people today.
We tell our kids that they have to go to school and then we do nothing — I said nothing — to keep them safe while they are trying to learn today how to survive in tomorrow’s world.
We cherish our guns and the myths around those weapons more than we cherish our children, our future. Why else would we make 5-year-olds practice live-shooter drills? It didn’t used to be this way.
As for climate change, it doesn’t take a genius to look at Lake Mead and realize something is terribly wrong. It isn’t that we aren’t among the best conservers of water in the nation; we are. It is more that we, as a country, refuse to accept that the climate is changing, that humans play a significant role in precipitating that change, and that we are way past the time when we can just talk about changing our ways.
When the Ice Age came, the dinosaurs didn’t know what hit them. In large part, because their small brains couldn’t comprehend what was happening.
We humans have much larger brains but we continue to think small in our refusal to embrace climate change and amend our own ways that contribute to that change. We can’t even agree that science has long ago determined wherein the fault lies, deciding instead to disrespect those who are begging us to act with dispatch based upon irrefutable proof!
I am reminded of a fascinating dinner my wife, Myra, and I had at the White House many years ago. There were just six of us, good friends sharing a good meal. At the end, the lady of the house asked each of us to name the one person on the world stage whom we admired and respected. And whom we would like to meet.
I remember there were names like Nelson Mandela, Lech Wałęsa and Teddy Kollek who made that very short list of people to be admired.
I asked the same question the other night.
With some deference to the young people at the table who could name sports and entertainment figures with ease, the adults gathered there had far more difficulty naming names.
The point is that something unfortunate has happened in our world. We have come from a place just three decades ago in which we could all readily agree on world leaders who deserved respect for their talent, morality, leadership and value to humanity, to this time in our lives where names are much harder to come by.
If we can’t agree on who or what should be admired and respected, how can we ever come to terms on important issues like saving schoolchildren’s lives or dealing with climate change that threatens humanity by the billions of people?
As Americans, we have a responsibility unlike most others on the planet. We are responsible for our government and for the leaders we choose. When we fail to choose well, America fails.
I think that is the crossroads at which we find ourselves in 2022.
As we sit around our dinner tables — eating food that costs more today than yesterday — do we take the time to understand why? Why, really, does milk cost more? Gas cost more? And why that which was plentiful yesterday is scarce today?
Do we explain those answers to our kids or just repeat the bumper stickers that prevail on social media that have far less to do with explanation and much more to do with societal manipulation?
In the end, it still falls to the adults to produce those people in all walks of life to whom the young people can look up to — to admire and respect for their contributions to a better world.
I’m not referring to a better financial world, or athletic world or even a musical world — although each of those areas of human pursuit have great merit and add greatly to the human condition — but a better world generally.
By that, I mean a world in which people respect their differences, not use them to divide. A world in which people are concerned for their neighbors, not callous to their plight. And a world where neighbors don’t turn against neighbors for some perceived political purpose but turn toward one another in common pursuit of an idea much bigger than themselves.
It is on that front that I believe America is failing. But we must not and cannot allow ourselves to be the kind of country in which such failure is an option. Because failure means the end of this grand experiment in democracy and self-rule.
We have lost our way in the past few years. We have given in to the charlatans, the elixir salesmen and those who prey upon the weak, the ignorant and the scared among us. By the way, that’s a whole lot of us right now!
But we have always found our way back from the brink and there is no reason we can’t do it again.
First, we must find ourselves at the dinner table with those who depend upon us to set the table for a promising future in America. Then, we must act with courage and conviction and moral clarity — just like the great Americans who have come before us.
You know, the kind of people whose names would make any list of people worthy of admiration.
Brian Greenspun is editor, publisher and owner of the Sun.