Where is Our Country?

 

This is not the America I grew up in, back in the 1950s and 60s. It just isn’t. What happened?

I was a white kid from the suburbs. I had a dad who went off to work each morning, and a mom who stayed home all day until I started first grade. Even then, her job was part-time, 9-2, so she was always home for us. Always.

We played in our yard at first, and as we got older played in the other yards, too. There were almost no fences back then, just one yard spilling into the next. This meant that adults all could yell at us, and protect us, and they did, and we took that for granted. There was no anger or malice towards them telling us what to do, what not to do, or when told to go home.

If there were predators and serial killers and lone nuts, we never heard about them. My parents didn’t own guns, nor knew anyone who owned a gun. There were no burglaries or break-ins in our neighborhood. My once-a-week paper route to deliver 100 copies of an advertising flyer that took me two nights to complete, took me several blocks from home. My parents simply had no concerns about that. There weren’t any drug dealers standing openly on street corners, nor gangs conducting drive-by shootings. The only public demonstrations came from Negroes demanding their rights. Later, the Vietnam war brought out a different type of protester.

On Sundays we always went to church, dressed in our finest clothes. Our neighbors went to their churches, too. It was what people did back then. They spent the rest of the day at home, because stores were closed. There really wasn’t any place to go.

My Catholic school required we wear uniforms with school ties, and say the Pledge of Allegiance each morning, and a prayer to start the day, and another one before lunch. Public schools also began their day with the Pledge. No one ever met the principal, yet all were scared to death of being sent to him.

Doors weren’t automatic yet. People actually held them open for each other and smiled and offered a greeting to total strangers. Gas station attendants wore uniforms with ties, and offered to check the oil and the tires, and washed the windows, too. Mom had to actually go inside a bank to conduct her business She was always greeted with a smile, and given a calendar every year.

Our pediatrician came to the house for emergencies and this was considered normal. Whatever was wrong with us could be cured by whatever he carried in his black bag.

My dad’s one car had a large steering wheel, no power steering or brakes, an am-radio, long fins, and a really wide back seat that could seat three adults and me sometimes. There was no cruise control, there were no child locks or air bags, no automatic locks and windows, no heated seats that moved in six different directions, no back-up cameras, and no satellite-based maps. The tires had white walls, and the fenders had flexible steel curb finders for ease of parking.

At night, during the winter months, we would be allowed to watch television until 7:30 p.m. which definitely was bedtime. That Walt Disney’s show ran from 7-8 made zero difference to my mother. Bedtime, was bedtime. I have no idea what shows were on the other two channels. Our little black and white swiveled on four legs, but wasn’t the finest piece of furniture in our living room. The ads were sure different. No feminine hygiene products, bra ads, or male sexual performance aids. No one swore,  or exposed a wrong body part.

I am sure my dad grumbled over the politics and stories displayed in the newspaper. It wasn’t a perfectly idyllic time, but it sure seemed like it. We weren’t involved in war anywhere in the world. The Russians weren’t a threat, and no one had heard of Vietnam. We elected new leaders when their terms expired. We hadn’t begun to shoot them yet.

After the JFK assassination, things seemed different. I have come to look upon that event 54 years later as a simple and direct coup d’etat. It was smoothly carried out almost perfectly, covered up, I believe, by one lie after another to the people by the very govt sworn to lead and protect them.

Assassinations became routine: JFK, RFK, MLK JR., Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, James Meredith, civil rights workers, George Wallace, the list is endless. Blacks started marching and protesting and burning down portions of cities, usually their own neigbhorhoods, while looting them clean, complaining about their rights. Police oppression and use of force, routinely it seemed against black citizens, finally resulted in the turbulent summer of 2020, made worse by the pandemic.

Prayer in school disappeared, as did respect for our flag. School environments became looser. Students started being more individual, less compliant, and less respectful, to themselves, and everyone else. Classroom disruptions became routine, as did assaults on teachers and staff.

Automation seemed to come on in a rush, and the friendliness seemed to ebb out of our society one step at a time. Suddenly we didn’t need elevator operators, doormen, gas station attendants, bank tellers, checkout cashiers, toll booth operators, or telephone operators.

Food could be obtained without leaving our cars, and so could cash. We could buy liquor in a drive-through lane, and soon pay phones disappeared too. Comic hero Dick Tracy’s two-way radio wristwatch gave way to devices that told time, played music, provided weather updates, and gave driving directions and the news, all in one. We slipped away increasingly from human contact with all this automation, this ease of living. We gave up something that is hard to put a finger on.

We have driverless cars, electric cars, solar powered cars. There are trains without engineers, ships without crews, and trucks without drivers.

Our schools have devolved into near-disaster centers. Only a handful of students seem to excel, to want to apply themselves, despite having much-dedicated staff at their disposal. Dress codes for staff and students are all but extinct, and this attitude shows up, poorly, in daily relations and accomplishments by both parties. The Pledge of Allegiance, made optional by the Supreme Court in 1943, is being all but ignored. Some students choose not to stand for recitation. Forget praying, in classrooms, on athletic fields, at commencement exercises.

Police officers routinely are assigned to schools, and not just for traffic control. Schoolyard fights now result in student arrests and court time, instead of the shake hands and get on with your lives approach we once favored, which worked. Drug dogs work the hallways and no one thinks this strange. Too many high school graduates, certified in May as having been educated to a certain level, require remedial classes in the most basic of courses as they begin college. What happened?

Crime seems ubiquitous, although folks reading this will cite downward-spiraling stats that indicate otherwise. Road rage is a common daily occurrence. Drivers wave at each other with just one finger instead of the whole hand.

Guns of all types are absolutely everywhere, and there is no shortage of ammo. No shortage of people who are convinced they fully and clearly understand our 2^nd Amendment. Worse, there is no desire, no indication of compromise at all on this deeply divisive and vicious issue, of whom, should allowed to have what. When did we decide the answer to gun violence, was more guns?

Our national social fabric is ripped nearly to shreds. E Pluribus Unum is a fading fantasy, a relic of yesteryear. In its place is every single cause one can dream up, with a group following, each demanding their right to be heard, and none of them interested in opposing opinion.

Our three branches of federal government, once so eloquently designed to both mesh and counter-balance one another, have all but disappeared in their individuality. Congress adamantly refuses to work on a bi-partisan cooperative basis, and instead each side takes a stance, rigidly digs in, and nothing gets done. This leaves presidents with no choice but to issue Executive Orders to pass laws to get much of anything accomplished. This is basically the opposite of what our Founding Fathers had in mind, wanted, designed. Their greatest fear was a return to Monarchy, but that indeed is basically what we have been operating with for too long now. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court, unable to remain neutral, spends its time reversing previous decisions, almost all in favor of Big Business. Our country has stalled as a result. The rich have gotten incredibly richer, and the poor have gotten incredibly more poor, and the supporting middle class has all but disappeared.

We are a nation founded upon, dependent upon immigration, always have been and always will be. The Lady in The Harbor weeps as she holds her increasingly dim lamp, aghast at a process once so treasured by so many, and now reviled by those already here.

What happened?