Election Doom
I’ve spent the last 2 weeks trying to figure out exactly why this election has hit me so hard. A number of friends said they recall feeling this way the day after 9/11. Right now, I feel that way too, exactly, but I’m not sure why. I’ve had candidates I’ve supported lose before but this really felt more like a death than the aftermath of an election. As I watch the internet and social media go through the stages of grief, from anger through denial to acceptance, it feels exactly like someone, or some ‘thing’ has died.
I travel a lot and try to cover a wide swathe of countries and cultures. I like being in a place where no English is spoken. I like being in places where little kids walk up to me and say, “Where you from?”, and when I answer, “America” they go, “USA is OKAY!”, and give me a thumbs up. I am always amazed at the goodwill America engenders in people; no matter how many times we invade, bomb them or overthrow their governments there is still this belief that we are the place that is “OK!” The country that welcomes everyone, where they can start a business, get an education, or live without the threat of the government looking over their shoulder or jail them for asking for their basic human rights. The idea of an almost magical place where ‘anything is possible’ still lives in the eyes of many of the people I’ve met on my travels. Even when they seem to dislike some of the things the US has done. they still hold onto that ideal of the ‘city on the hill’. maybe as dearly as we do. Maybe just the existence of America, that Great Experiment in Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, gives them the courage to hope.
One of my more enlightening interactions was in Zanzibar in 2001. I was in a fish market and it was right after 9/11. There was a guy selling fish, he was covered in blood and guts, it was a hot day and the place smelled like only a fish market can/ a sewer/ swamp. He heard me speaking English and asked where I was from. Before I answered I took note of his shirt with a picture of the World Trade Center burning, Osama bin Laden’s face and the words, “God is Great” in Arabic on the front. Defiantly I said “USA” to make clear I was not kowtowing to his t-shirt. His response, “I love USA. I want to go start a fish shop there. I have a cousin in New Jersey”. I found the disconnect amazing. I said, “Well if you come, don’t wear that shirt to the airport”. He looked down and said, “Oh, this is nothing, I love America”.
We talked a bit more and this was his vision of us: that we are a welcoming land of opportunity. This is what I am worried will be lost in the coming years. We really are that Great Experiment and if it fails, as I think it now is in danger of doing we might never get that chance again. I fear that in as much as we have been led to believe there are forces in the world that want us to fail, there are multitudes of ordinary people who root for us to succeed. For in our success as a land of opportunity lies the salvation of their dreams. My friend in Zanzibar can dream of one day having a fish shop in America, because America is the place where that fish shop means security and freedom from poverty and tyranny.
What will happen if the great thinkers and doers can no longer come here to start a business, or do research? What if it is no longer a welcoming place for scientists because we are becoming anti-science, or their skin color, ethnicity or religion is suddenly an insurmountable barrier? Where does that leave the most innovative economy in the world, and by extension the world, when we reject the very thing that led to our greatness: our diversity, our openness to new ideas and our ability to foster progress. It is not a coincidence that every major invention of the 20th Century has taken place on American soil, frequently by scientists who were escaping from Fascist regimes (Einstein), or by visionaries who were descended from immigrants (Steve Jobs).
I like what I was always told we were AIMING to be, which was always better than where we had been. I no longer see that, and I do not like where I think we are quickly going.
And so this thought has plagued me since the Election of 2016: that even in death, Osama bin Laden and his ilk, despite our best efforts, ended up beating us. He was a terrorist and he succeeded in terrorizing us. He succeeded in breaking us down from the inside, when we gave into suspicion and fear and conspiracy thinking. He set the stage and people like Bush and Cheney played right into his hands by posting those stupid color coded terror warning everyday that kept us afraid and manipulated. It worked. Osama terrorized us and got us to turn on each other and anyone different and it ripped up the fabric of the country and look where it landed us. We are most definitely not OK anymore. We have internalized the terror and our ship of state is at risk of crashing into the rocks that many failed democracies before us have historically been unable to avoid. It seems every 100 years or so, the length of a human life span, we need to re-learn the lessons that earlier generations risked so much to protect us from.
Just as the strength of a great feat of engineering is predicated upon the strength of an individual component, like the hexagonal wonder of a beehive or the cantilever of a bridge, so the delicate balance of democracy relies on the rights of the individual. E Pluribus Unum. Out of Many, One, has been our defining creed.
And now we have a President who campaigned expressly on the basis of stripping groups of individuals of their rights, based on the color of their skin or the direction of their faith. If he succeeds, if we watch Muslims being registered and interred, or Mexicans being deported, the very fabric of our democracy is rent. As surely as Osama reaching in and pulling out our guts and holding them up, a testament to his assertion that we are no better, that we occupy no moral high ground. That diversity and the great melting pot have nothing to offer that fascism and fear cannot do better.
It took 15 years after the buildings fell but I think he won, or at least it feels like we have lost something essential to our nature, and we will spend many years trying to put it back. Whether we succeed or not is for the most audacious and risk-tolerant prognosticators to venture a guess right now, because we are still in mourning. And I think we might be for a long time to come.
I travel a lot and try to cover a wide swathe of countries and cultures. I like being in a place where no English is spoken. I like being in places where little kids walk up to me and say, “Where you from?”, and when I answer, “America” they go, “USA is OKAY!”, and give me a thumbs up. I am always amazed at the goodwill America engenders in people; no matter how many times we invade, bomb them or overthrow their governments there is still this belief that we are the place that is “OK!” The country that welcomes everyone, where they can start a business, get an education, or live without the threat of the government looking over their shoulder or jail them for asking for their basic human rights. The idea of an almost magical place where ‘anything is possible’ still lives in the eyes of many of the people I’ve met on my travels. Even when they seem to dislike some of the things the US has done. they still hold onto that ideal of the ‘city on the hill’. maybe as dearly as we do. Maybe just the existence of America, that Great Experiment in Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, gives them the courage to hope.
One of my more enlightening interactions was in Zanzibar in 2001. I was in a fish market and it was right after 9/11. There was a guy selling fish, he was covered in blood and guts, it was a hot day and the place smelled like only a fish market can/ a sewer/ swamp. He heard me speaking English and asked where I was from. Before I answered I took note of his shirt with a picture of the World Trade Center burning, Osama bin Laden’s face and the words, “God is Great” in Arabic on the front. Defiantly I said “USA” to make clear I was not kowtowing to his t-shirt. His response, “I love USA. I want to go start a fish shop there. I have a cousin in New Jersey”. I found the disconnect amazing. I said, “Well if you come, don’t wear that shirt to the airport”. He looked down and said, “Oh, this is nothing, I love America”.
We talked a bit more and this was his vision of us: that we are a welcoming land of opportunity. This is what I am worried will be lost in the coming years. We really are that Great Experiment and if it fails, as I think it now is in danger of doing we might never get that chance again. I fear that in as much as we have been led to believe there are forces in the world that want us to fail, there are multitudes of ordinary people who root for us to succeed. For in our success as a land of opportunity lies the salvation of their dreams. My friend in Zanzibar can dream of one day having a fish shop in America, because America is the place where that fish shop means security and freedom from poverty and tyranny.
What will happen if the great thinkers and doers can no longer come here to start a business, or do research? What if it is no longer a welcoming place for scientists because we are becoming anti-science, or their skin color, ethnicity or religion is suddenly an insurmountable barrier? Where does that leave the most innovative economy in the world, and by extension the world, when we reject the very thing that led to our greatness: our diversity, our openness to new ideas and our ability to foster progress. It is not a coincidence that every major invention of the 20th Century has taken place on American soil, frequently by scientists who were escaping from Fascist regimes (Einstein), or by visionaries who were descended from immigrants (Steve Jobs).
I like what I was always told we were AIMING to be, which was always better than where we had been. I no longer see that, and I do not like where I think we are quickly going.
And so this thought has plagued me since the Election of 2016: that even in death, Osama bin Laden and his ilk, despite our best efforts, ended up beating us. He was a terrorist and he succeeded in terrorizing us. He succeeded in breaking us down from the inside, when we gave into suspicion and fear and conspiracy thinking. He set the stage and people like Bush and Cheney played right into his hands by posting those stupid color coded terror warning everyday that kept us afraid and manipulated. It worked. Osama terrorized us and got us to turn on each other and anyone different and it ripped up the fabric of the country and look where it landed us. We are most definitely not OK anymore. We have internalized the terror and our ship of state is at risk of crashing into the rocks that many failed democracies before us have historically been unable to avoid. It seems every 100 years or so, the length of a human life span, we need to re-learn the lessons that earlier generations risked so much to protect us from.
Just as the strength of a great feat of engineering is predicated upon the strength of an individual component, like the hexagonal wonder of a beehive or the cantilever of a bridge, so the delicate balance of democracy relies on the rights of the individual. E Pluribus Unum. Out of Many, One, has been our defining creed.
And now we have a President who campaigned expressly on the basis of stripping groups of individuals of their rights, based on the color of their skin or the direction of their faith. If he succeeds, if we watch Muslims being registered and interred, or Mexicans being deported, the very fabric of our democracy is rent. As surely as Osama reaching in and pulling out our guts and holding them up, a testament to his assertion that we are no better, that we occupy no moral high ground. That diversity and the great melting pot have nothing to offer that fascism and fear cannot do better.
It took 15 years after the buildings fell but I think he won, or at least it feels like we have lost something essential to our nature, and we will spend many years trying to put it back. Whether we succeed or not is for the most audacious and risk-tolerant prognosticators to venture a guess right now, because we are still in mourning. And I think we might be for a long time to come.