What I’ve/We’ve Lost — America Through My Eyes
Inspired by The New York Times Series “What Have We Lost?”
“A nation has first to have remembered something before it can begin to forget it. Until the French understood Vichy as it was — and not as they had chosen to misremember it — they could not put it aside and move on… Only after Germans had appreciated and digested the enormity of their Nazi past — a sixty-year cycle of denial, education, debate and consensus could they begin to live with it: i.e. put it behind them.”[1]
Unlike May 8th, 1945 which definitively marked the end of the Second World War, an invisible war over culture, truth, and justice has no clear end. So, without a clear end, when does the reconciliation begin?
In America, November 3rd, 2020 is neither that end nor beginning — it will just mark the conclusion of the first major battle. In this four year battle, I lost something, and I think a lot of us did as well — the way forward. Before Trump, the United States was undoubtedly a deeply troubled country. Nevertheless, I’d contend that for the most part, Americans still believed that even with our flaws, change and progress were possible — at least I did.
Not anymore.
See, in the last four years, I lost the way forward. I lost the conviction that America can change for the better. Not change in some trivial way, but fundamentally and profoundly, change.
In the 2016 election, nearly 63 million people voted for Trump. With voter turnout in the 2020 election projected to be higher than in 2016, it’s safe to say no matter who wins, a similar number will cast their vote for Trump this time around. After the last four years, regardless if Biden wins, at least 63 million Americans still voting for Trump makes a powerful statement, considering the 230,000 COVID-19 deaths and counting due in no small part to grossly incompetent leadership. Please, convince me to once again believe in the future of America, an America where 63 million people ignore the sirens of ambulances, the empty seat at the Thanksgiving table, and the cries of frontline workers risking their lives while begging for adequate PPE. How can I believe there’s a way forward when recent research from Stanford University estimates Trump’s rallies alone led to 700 COVID-19 deaths and 30,000 cases?[2]
Show me the way forward with three deeply conservative, lifetime appointees to the Supreme Court — who, by the way, hold views on abortion, healthcare, and LGBT rights that diverge from the majority of Americans and were confirmed by a Senate Republican ‘majority’ representing 15 million fewer people. Please open my eyes to the light at the end of this tunnel, where the amount of disinformation coming from Fox News makes it practically undisguisable from the Kremlin.
Biden may very well win the election, but I don’t envision him eliminating the Electoral College, ending gerrymandering, putting the brakes on voter disenfranchisement, nor being able to stop the commodification of our elections resulting from the Citizens United decision. How can I convince myself to believe in a profoundly different America, all the while knowing that no matter the election results, there will still be factions within the 63 million Trump voters who subscribe to QANON conspiracy theories, are members of far right-wing militias like the Proud Boys, proclaim Trump’s impeachment was a hoax, believe masks are tools to control us and contend mail-in voting is fraudulent.
Now, someone might object to my logic and suggest that Trump is a symptom of a changing America but not the cause. And they’d be right — before Trump, gun violence was rampant across the country, African Americans faced systematic racism and injustice, the U.S. education system was crumbling, our healthcare was disastrous, and the filibuster still undermined and gridlocked the Senate. But there was something different in America before Trump; the nasty underbelly of our country was concealed just enough to allow us to naively believe we could and would be better someday. That someday is not today.
Not when the only time school shootings in America stop is because the schools are closed due to a global pandemic, not because of responsible gun control legislation. Not when the federal government cannot locate the parents of 545 immigrant children. Not when unidentifiable federal troops are deployed in cities across America to violently suppress protests. And certainly not when everything I’ve mentioned until this point has been rubber-stamped and gone unopposed by an entire political party — their silence speaks volumes. How can I see the way forward when injustice after injustice, tragedy after tragedy, goes unaccounted for and unopposed by the GOP and their base? No matter who wins this election, many of those same men and women in the Republican party will remain in power, because voters support them — still.
Unlike Germany or France where the war has ended, the war for the soul of the United States is not over when this election cycle ends. Rather, it has just begun. With its beginning, the denial and misremembering we are experiencing now are not analogous to the first stages of reconciliation in Europe. Rather, they are equivalent to propaganda disseminated in the first stages of a war to rally support to fight against the newly defined enemy — even if that enemy is your neighbor.
On January 1, 1892, the first immigrants were processed at Ellis Island. One of the first sights they would see when arriving in America was the Statue of Liberty which proclaimed:
“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”
Undeniably, the United States was, and still is, a profoundly flawed country and this freedom symbolized by the Statue of Liberty ignored our history of racism, segregation, slavery, and other atrocities. Nevertheless, at least in my interpretation, the Statue of Liberty represented America’s never-ending pursuit of progress and improvement. Lady Liberty didn’t represent perfection nor justice or equality, but the endless pursuit thereof. When I was in New York City two years ago, standing below the Statue of Liberty, tears came to my eyes. Even then, before COVID-19, before so many of the unforgivable acts committed by the Trump administration, I knew the values Lady Liberty symbolized were no more. The America I witnessed was anything but the one which opened its arms to 12 million immigrants passing through Ellis Island. We had lost the way forward, and so had I.
[1] Judt, Postwar : A History of Europe Since 1945, 829–30.
[2] Bernheim, B. Douglas and Buchmann, Nina and Freitas-Groff, Zach and Otero, Sebastián, The Effects of Large Group Meetings on the Spread of COVID-19: The Case of Trump Rallies (October 30, 2020). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3722299
