Right Side of History?
Being on the right side of history requires winning the present and thus the future.
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Old Yiddish proverb, “We plan, God laughs.”
And still we plan. Those plans lead to expectations and eventually invade our DNA becoming a false sense of security.
Got a problem? Not to worry. Soon there will be an app for that.
Here in the future everything has been thought out for you and your comfort. Easy peasy.
Enter Vladimir Putin with his own DNA knitted together with hatred for the West and a vision for making Russia great again.
And NO - that’s not a weak, funny, or even interesting comparison to Donald Trump’s MAGA movement.
The problem is that Russia has never been great and is a declining power; however, it’s a nuclear armed power that needs to be managed much better than it has been.
(China on the other hand…)
See what happens when Americans think other people think like we do? Hint - they don’t. They think like they think.
(Trump’s campaign slogans of “Drain the Swamp” and “Make America Great Again” were/are very effective political marketing. They were the opposite of Hillary Clinton’s awful, “I’m With Her.”)
America, on the other hand, is great, has been great, and will be greater in the future once her people come to understand what truly made her great in the first place. Let’s call that the BIG IF. IF we come to understand and agree on that.
In sum, America is an idea versus being just a nation and we’re a great idea at that. Russia, on the other hand, is a nation of great people trapped in its history of poor leadership following bad ideas.
I have been reading an advance copy of a wonderful book “Why America is Free” by Jack Warren which takes the reader through the great American Revolution.
Our Revolution, sadly, has been distilled down to bumper sticker thinking “We beat the Brits. Hooray! It’s a three day weekend, so let’s fire up the grills or go the beach! Don’t hurt yourself on those out of state fireworks! Okay, back to work…”
“Why America is Free” is a textbook/novel and a pleasure to read; however, its real power is that it makes me think. Deeply. As such, this is a slow read for me given all that is going on these days.
One of the expressions which labors to become law is this trite but nonetheless laudable goal of “being on the right side of history.”
It’s injected into so many political conversations and policy debates that I have found my eyes rolling back so far into my head that I actually turn my whole body in contempt to the arrogance and hubris of the notion.
Right side of history?
Okay. Who writes history?
Winston, what do you have for us on that?
And Mr. Orwell?
With me so far?
One has to win first.
Even the most cursory examination of history shows just how lucky we are to be where we are. I don’t just mean lucky to be complaining about flying in an aluminum tube with 200 other people at 550+ miles per hour with no Wifi and landing at 3:18pm versus the ticketed ETA of 3:10pm.
No, I mean lucky to be speaking the language of our choice in a country where the current major debate on human rights/fairness/justice is whether or not a man can identify as a woman and compete against other women in women’s sports whilst still sporting male genitalia.
Yes, America. You are one lucky nation.
Or have you not seen the images coming out of Mariupol or Kyiv?
Think of it. How lucky are we to be living in this day and age? In ALL of human existence we have never had it so good and yet are so miserable in direct comparison to that very good fortune.
The vast majority of us are better off than 99.99% of people who have ever lived.
And yet.
And yet we don’t see it that way. We bitch and moan and complain all the damn time.
We buy the lie or lies that finding meaning and purpose in our time of bounty is not possible.
Trust me when I say that I am NOT NOT NOT downplaying that very real struggle. In just the last month, I have had three people I know who lost that struggle and took their own lives.
Three.
In fact, death by suicide or addiction to drugs or alcohol is the most common form of death among people that I personally know in my age demographic. And almost all are male.
We buy the lies that we tell ourselves even though, up to now, America has won without a plan to do so largely because we had a direct and obvious ideological competitor. That is until about thirty years ago when the Berlin Wall came down.
Eventually, lacking a common enemy other than that whole War on Terrorism/UBL thing which we put on the credit card, we turned on ourselves.
We won the ideological battles of western liberal democracies vs totalitarian fascism and communism.
Why?
Because the course set by our founders was rooted in the Great Idea. It didn't just happen. It was a long hard battle with more than one massively lucky break.
The history of the American Revolution should be a constant course of study for all of our people so that we don’t stray from that Great Idea or freedom and the great question of why America is free.
If we stray from that course, take it for granted, and fail to defend it?
We will lose it and our history.
As Neil Diamond wrote and sang in “America” - on hold video below.
Far, we've been traveling far
Without a home but not without a star
Free, only want to be free
We huddle close, hang on to a dream
On the boats and on the planes
They're coming to America
Never looking back again
They're coming to America
Home, don't it seem so far away
We're traveling light today
In the eye of the storm
In the eye of the storm
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Here are the most recent polling averages of Biden approve/disapprove, right track/wrong track, Generic Ballot, and Trump v Biden in ‘24.
