First off, wishing all a very Merry Christmas!
All my life, I was told what was right and wrong. What was acceptable. What was “standard.”
Then one day I realized I did not agree with all of that. Some of those things I, ME, actually objected to. Why was MY orientation, my values, my comprehension of life valueless?
Some of the things I liked were not mainstream. They were not approved or fashionable or widely accepted.
But they were not bad. They were simply different. I learned to celebrate that individuality. Growing up in the 1960s and 70s didn't hurt that orientation, or stop it from coming into being.
That realization expanded. It expanded when I got into the USAF and met people from all around the country and our protectorates. And even other countries. These immigrants were not to be feared but respected for their serving and when I heard they did not have citizenship, were not guaranteed it after having served, I was offended. Put YOUR life on the line for OUR country and you do not necessarily gain citizenship? Who does that?
I came to understand people who were different from me in deeper ways.
I grew up knowing about Gay people. They were very nice from what I could see. I was never bet up by a Gay person. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, just that the only people who ever bullied me or harmed me physically were very, very heterosexual. Or so they believed, perhaps they were denying something within themselves. Something that would have to cause one confusion, and pain.
Then trans people came out and were getting rights. All my life I was fascinated by people from other cultures and lived experiences. I was not part of those groups, but I understood the principle.
Difference was not a threat. It was a feature of a healthy society. And I celebrated that too.
For a long time, this all seemed compatible with a shared center. We were individuals, but we still belonged to something larger. I always believed that common ground was America. Not as an ideology, but as a civic and cultural agreement that allowed difference to exist without tearing us apart.
Then came cable TV/ Then 24 hour news cycles Then news as entertainment and no longer as a "loss leader". Then I gained access in the 1980s to the internet and there was more amazing stuff out there. As I had in the 1960s in connecting with people around the world on a Ham Radio, I could talk to a NASA scientist online in a newsgroup, or an artist in Paris, or a soldier in Germany.
Then social media arrived.
Then came the monetization of outrage. People discovered they could make money, power, and attention by exploiting division, by turning identity into a weapon rather than a bridge.
That is when things broke for us.
Celebrating individuality is good. Honoring culture is good. But without a shared core of association, without some common civic reality, we do not get freedom. We get fragmentation. And fragmentation is easily manipulated.
While we once had only three TV stations, we all watched the same shows. We had a shared culture. It was largely white, massively white, Christian in nature, but it wasn't oppressive, it wasn't nasty, it wasn't mean. But it was too monocultural.
In expanding that we took on other cultures. But at some point some were disgruntled, and felt their allowing room for others to exist in was somehow oppressive to their culture, the one that had been dominant from the beginning.
Rather than being accepting, some because bitter. Sub-cultures recognized and opening and applied pressure to those weak points in our society. Some in power found a potential for power and wealth and they took up those positions and leveraged them. Foreign enemies saw those too and did the same, mimicking they were us and they were not.
Computer technology enhanced all of that. "To err is human, to really foul things up takes a computer."
That path led us to something darker.
To figures like Trump, and to movements as toxic as his MaGA, where identity is no longer something to celebrate, but something to mobilize against others. It became a political personality cult.
That is not individuality.
That is exploitation.
And it is costing us the very society that once made individuality possible.
It is not America. Not the America we were evolving into, maturing into, becoming with open arms that were then slapped back until today we are divesting, we are isolating, pulling into ourselves worldwide and not embracing others but seeking the auspices of greed, selfishness and avarice.
That just is not America. It's not My America. And I really don't think it's yours, either.
Because that puts us on a dark path. A very dark path, as we're now on. And if we're not careful, very bad things will come of it. It's happened before. Elsewhere. Decades ago, not that far away. A distance that has shrunken over the years.
So far, we are walking a fine line between darkness and light and it appears we will in the end err on the side of that lightness. Of our "better angels".
But we need to continue to apply pressure to those weak points of the bad in our culture, to allow the good to seep out and outweigh what is bad.
It is my hope we will succeed. For that IS America. And exactly who we should be.
Cheers! Sláinte! Na zdravie!
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