Voices in My Head
Replay: Angry Americans, Our House is on Fire. We better Do Something.
I am an Angry American and I’m not alone except I really don’t want to be. But, it’s hard when you are being daily bombarded by violent words and violent images from both sides of the ideological spectrum. Have you read the latest tweets from President Donald Trump and his nemesis, everyone else? Angry Americans have fallen into a rabbit hole of constant and insistent bickering online, caustic comments, unliking siblings, relatives, and lifelong friendships, insanity unleashed, and threats to slash each other’s tires and burn down each other’s houses. I hate to tell you but America’s house is already on fire and no one seems to give a sh*t. The problem is that the only one that can put out the fire are those same Americans. If we do give a damn, we better get working on putting out those fires with the help of each other. Or else.
History of Angry Americans
As a student of American History, I know I shouldn’t be surprised by any of this. None of this is new: the fear, the rage, the acrimony, the hate, and vitriol shared across the ideological spectrum by so many angry Americans. This is so American. Don’t you remember, we fought a shooting civil war more than 158 years ago and nearly totally burned our house down? There have been other cold and hot wars, small and large, where Americans fought each other and those battles and skirmished have been lost to history books and the memories of those who fought them. The difference today is that we can see it live every minute of every day, google it up on YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram, and share it with millions, even billions of people, who may not have a clue as to what they’re watching. It doesn’t seem to matter. Hell, it’s reality show entertainment. But it’s not. It’s real-life with real people who sometimes get hurt or even killed.
We should remember how close to hot civil wars we’ve come, just during the past seventy years of my life. I was still very young but I remember the stories about the effects of the Red Scare and the McCarthy era of the fifties when families turned against families and neighbors reported on neighbors and every word spoken was dissected and scrutinized for impure ideological loyalty. You could lose your job, your family and social network, and once in a while get the sh*t kicked out of you.
Angry Americans of my generation can remember the struggle during the sixties for Civil Rights legislation to finally put to rest 100 years of post-American Civil War denial. That’s the part where the United States of America continued to proclaim that “all men are created equal” while stomping on the civil rights of everyone who didn’t look like their version of American. I didn’t get it. How could we be so hypocritical? So, I became angrier as I watched Americans using vicious dogs and illegitimate laws and policies in southern and northern cities to keep fellow Americans down. Civil Rights laws were passed and we cheered and for a hot minute, we stopped being so damn angry. It didn’t last long. There were riots in the streets, assassinations of hope and faith, promises made and unfulfilled, and dreams burned away into hopelessness and anger.
Then, there was a war in another country with a name that no one could pronounce or locate on a map and no one cared. It wasn’t until our brothers and cousins began leaving us and coming back in body bags that it became real. Our television sets blew up every night with news reports of body counts and battles in places with unpronounceable names. Oh, hell no, angry Americans shouted, we won’t go. We seethed and we huffed and we puffed and we brought down one President only to be promised an end to the endless war by another more lying and deceitful President. And we still were angry. The Silent Majority versus the very loud Other Majority.
Through the seventies into the eighties and nineties, battles and skirmishes over Women’s rights, affirmative action, wars in Central America and the Middle East, political wars continued. Through it all, somehow, we kept coming back to the ideal of the United States of America as E Pluribus Unum while we refused to see and treat all the sores and wounds, the unfinished business of America in small towns and big cities, in our churches and schools, in the corporate board rooms and the corner store. This was no longer the pre-sixties black and white version of America. We were now a more visible mosaic of colors, languages, cultures, genders, and self-described selves. America has spent the last six decades either in denial of or celebrating a nation that reflects the diversity of planet earth. Paraphrasing, one side shouted, “They will not replace us” while the other screamed back, “We’re here. Get used to it.”
Americans Have A Choice
Many of us have always believed the changes in the past six decades would have happened with or without anyone’s permission. It’s a modern world where we cross borders every day with instant communications on the internet and travel by airplanes. You just can not stop the progress of humankind mixing and mashing no matter how hard you try. There are no walls big enough at our borders or state lines to stop it.
Which brings us to 2019 and the last nine years. From the day that President Barack Obama was sworn in through the past nearly three years of Donald Trump’s presidency, I think we’ve become not only angrier as a people but also closer to turning hot words into hot action. Some folks seem to have gone stark raving mad. Have you read and seen the political vitriol on social media? The almost constant political violence in the streets from the lone gunman with a grudge and the means to express his frustrations to the political mobs swinging sticks and fists; pitting one set of angry Americans against another ending in smashed heads and bleeding bodies. One set of so-called political leadership square off against another while spewing gasoline on the fire instead of extinguishing it. I worry that the next fourteen months until the 2020 elections are going to result in more fuel on our burning house.
It will take all of us angry Americans to gather the courage to define and accept who we want to be as Americans. We cannot turn back the clock to an America that never really existed except on television or in our minds nor should we. All of us must accept the reality of America today: the great mosaic that also includes great ideas and revolutionary solutions. That’s what makes America great. We can begin with acceptance of that reality and work from there. We are rich because of that unique mosaic making us the envy of so many other countries. Embrace and live it. We must reveal ourselves to each other in transparent ways and appreciate all of our contributions to this great mosaic. If we are to survive as the United States of America, this is not a hard choice. There are no winners in a burnt down America.
