a slightly different path today…
not an individual one, but a collective one…
I was born an American…I have not live in any other
country… I was indoctrinated in the myths, prejudices,
superstitions, biases, habits of America at the end of the 1950’s.
Growing up, I was told being an American meant something…
you stood for something… your values are the highest values
of anyone… past and present……
me and millions of other baby boomers were given the sanitized
version of what America is…what it was and what it stood for…
it was recited to me, as part of my heritage, that all men are created
equal… and yet at the exact same time, black Americans were fighting to
be treated equally, to be allowed to vote equally, to be allowed to marry
equally, to be allowed to sit in diners and restaurants equally, to be educated
equally………
we had a line, a demarcation line between the words and dreams we used
and the reality at the time……. our words did not match our reality……
we said, all men are created equal… and yet, men, black men were not
treated equal and we did not treat women equal and we did not
treat sexual orientation equal and we did not treat religious affiliations
equal………
this gap between the reality and the words was unspoken
and unnoticed………
every civilization has a gap between its dream, its words
and its reality…
the high sounding words of America clashed with the reality
on the ground in America…….
if the difference is to great… we get events like the 1960’s…
our mighty words clashed with the reality on the ground
and the young revolted against this hypocrisy…
we, baby boomers have had many opportunities to revolt
against the hypocrisy of the last 40 years and yet we,
failed to do so… that is to our eternal shame……
today, we have a MAGA revolt… attempting to return
America to its previous greatness… and the failure lies
not in thinking to return America to its greatness, but
in thinking that bigotry and intolerance and greed and lust
is/was America’s greatness…as if America was its lower,
negative values……. it wasn’t…
the ideal of America as being “a city upon the hill” meaning
that America is a beacon of hope throughout the world,
has been lost… because that “beacon of hope”,
lies in our vision……
JFK spoke of that “city on the hill” on January 9, 1961…
……“today the eyes of all people are truly upon us-and our governments,
in every branch, at every level, national, state, and local, but be as a city
upon the hill- constructed and inhabited by men aware of their great trust
and their great responsibilities.”
and “their great responsibilities”……
we ask to be rewarded by our actions and our beliefs without
any corresponding awareness of our “great responsibilities”…
we are divorced… words and actions no longer match…
we ask for great rewards without any responsibilities…
name me a person who itemizes what it means to be an American…
tell me that person’s name who has judge what a human being is…
in our great pursuit of the empty goal of titles and wealth and power
and fame, we have forgotten what it means to be human and we
have forgotten what it means to be an American… we have no such
ideal guiding us as to what our “trust and responsibilities” are today…
there is no such mission statement as to what it means to be
an American or what it means to be a human being today…
we are rudderless because we have no map, no guide to aim us to
become better Americans or better human beings……
even the last slogan, “if they go low, we go high” leaves us
without any knowledge of what going high means in practical
terms…what is our standard going to be if we “go high”…
it is an empty promise because it doesn’t have any sort of
practical information as to our final goal… or what it
means to be an American or to be human…
we have to spell out in in no uncertain terms what it means to
be an American and what it means to be human…
and I want that accounting to be the high end of our
possibilities, the positive nature of what it means to
be an American or a human being……
not the low end… so to go low means we are/practice
injustice or intolerance or anger or hate or lust or greed…
I want any accounting of what it means to be human, to be on the
high end of what it means to be an American or to be an human being…
so, I want that accounting to be about love and justice and peace
and charity and honor and hope… you say, it is impossible for
us to reach those lofty goals… I say unto you, we must make
our goals to soar into the sky… to be much higher then we think is possible…
we must reach for the sun… and if we burn up, I have no problem with that…
to fail to reach a lofty goal is worth the effort… to succeed to reach a lowly
and mundane goal is worthless and insignificant…
it is only by aiming for the stars, can we claim to be human beings…
to be an human being, we must reach for justice, we must reach for love
and we must reach for peace and hope and charity…… set the bar extremely
high for us to reach becoming human, fully human…
to be an American, we must set the bar high, extremely high…
to reclaim our prior vision of being the “city on the hill”, we must
reclaim our moral high ground by being just and being love
and being hope and being peace and being charity…
to find out who we are, we must set the bar at the highest level
we can and then reach for the stars…
injustice will not be tolerated… intolerance will not be tolerated…
denying hope will not be tolerated…denying peace will not be tolerated……
torture and lying and being petty and denying people their fair share is no longer
to be tolerated…
we either reach for the stars in our word, in our actions, in our behavior
or we set aside our leadership of the world… and let others take over…
either we become better or we simply stop pretending that we have any moral
high ground left………
if they go low, we go high, but let us demonstrate what it means to
go high, let us enumerate what it means to go high, let us record
what it means to go high… let us hold ourselves to standards that bring
us to being better Americans and hold ourselves to standards that bring
us to being better human beings…
let us rise up and not down……… which means we have to have some
understanding of what it means to be human…
Kropotkin