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The Crisis of Americanism

A world in crisis is irresistible, so long as it remains abstract. I want an egregious headline in the news... and you do, too. But in order for it to satisfy, it must flow out of our consciousness before losing that initial hit of intrigue.

Which, up until recently, was par for the course. Because for most of America, the news did not dictate our reality. The news could be interesting, but it remained far from relevant. Day-to-day life could go on.

This was a privilege I didn’t know to recognize, though—I longed for my moment in the sun to be written about.

Long before I ever read anything by Ray Bradbury or CNN, things were read to me. I grew up on things like The American Girl series, Doll Hospital, and The Magic Treehouse, where the characters would experience the specific moments and events that exemplified an era—and did so in a way that contrasted the rawness of human experience. These close narratives of the past felt beautiful to me, no matter what the turmoil. I wanted to be in one of those stories badly. I wanted to actually experience something.

As it turns out, I just had to wait. But I nonetheless fell asleep wishing myself next to a wagon train, traveling the great expanse of America, or stuck on a cot in Ellis Island as my family went to the city of gold-paved streets.

Admittedly, it seems my perception of history and struggle itself was tinted in rose. But I was a child.

In the fifth grade, the genre of dystopia renewed itself as all the rage—stories like “The Hunger Games” and “The Giver” followed canon predecessors such as “Fahrenheit 451” and “Brave New World.” Consumable and illustrative, these tales served as fodder for imagination and intrigue. But it goes deeper than that—in nature, the dystopian genre points out existing flaws in society and exaggerates such for the sake of metaphorical effect. In this way, speculative fiction, which is often based in historical reality, will easily reflect our current reality, at some point or another. And as we move along as a human race, it does so in ways that are increasingly easy to identify.

Around the time of discovering the world of dystopia, I discovered the story of Anne Frank via picture book, and subsequently spiraled into becoming one of those children obsessed with the events of World War II. Nothing else shook me quite like it. Though technically too young at the time, I remember requesting to be a guest for a lecture series at a local college that explored the psychology behind the success of such a horrific regime as Nazism. And I was allowed to attend.

Ultimately, learning about the slow but steady progress that made the Nazi party successful in a modern, developed society forever changed my views on the meaning of humanity and society itself. The sad truth is, it is easy to be blind until rendered helpless when it comes to increasing totalitarianism and fascism. Because in the beginning, it is easily written off, and one can instead think only in terms of their everyday life...until your everyday life is indeed inevitably affected, and by that time, it is too late.

When the Nazis first performed their mass executions, they did so with the help of unknowing and, frankly, unwilling, young German soldiers. It was done in the dead of night, with mass graves and gunfire. While the soldiers to carry this out by order were just as young and naive as you and I, they were ultimately forced into a situation that once and for all destroyed any remaining semblance of morality. Collectively and rather quickly, they became drunkards and mentally insane. Which is largely, in part, what forced the efficient and insidious solution of gas chambers.

No matter which way you look at it, in the face of totalitarianism, once at its final peak, you were either a citizen or soldier that was subjected to the fist of fascism and actively turning your eyes away from the horror of reality, or you were a foreigner doing the same from afar, hoping against hope that it would never touch the same ground you stood upon.

As it stands, subjectively I would not say that we are necessarily at the precipice of another World War or a Civil War, for that matter. Yet the comparisons keep rolling in.

I would say, in agreement with the scholars and the educated majority, that where America stands at this time is a titular moment in history that both calls upon our past and greatly impacts our future.

If you are not considering these things, you are entitled and wrong.

But if you are, there is still so much to discuss.

Since the 2016 election, even in states that are purely red, discontentment has soared, with disunity abound. On an international level, disappointment has soared as well.

Many question the idea of rights being objectively taken away by the potential dual nomination of Trump. Yet, interestingly, the American public has been recorded as being in a state of unique, unprecedented depression these last four years, presumably due to the following of a nationally vitriolic and chaotic atmosphere. Despite temporary economic expansion, in the years following Trump’s election, the well-being of American adults has proven to have shifted to a state of increasing decline.

So, if there is not domestic tranquility and a sense of public welfare…What’s the point? Are you happy? Is Trump, specifically, making you happy? And why?

It is inarguable—and definitively should be a non-starter—that the current president holds a long, well-recorded history of sexual misconduct, harassment, bullying, white supremacy, racism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, collusion with Russia, obstruction of justice, political misconduct, and blatant disregard for proven environmental issues, not to mention the other factors of inadequacy that long ago should have eliminated him as a valid candidate for Head of State. When people judge others for supporting him, it is because none of the above is singularly, much less collectively, excusable—for anybody, under any circumstance.

So, frankly, I find it incredibly unpatriotic to support a person that has proved so disgraceful. That disgrace in and of itself is a direct representative of the United States of America.

I should not have to question my own patriotism and national identity because of peers and family members that choose to vehemently stand by the very man who has repeatedly destroyed my perception of what America means to me and what our country represents to others that exist outside of this bubble. With all that we know, both past and present, and all that we have at our fingertips—it is hurtful to live in today’s America.

It is hurtful to continually have to worry, and to fight, and to be consumed by the fact that despite our long established strongholds on world power and military dominance, we are so incredibly fragile and weak. It is hurtful that despite the long term, structural strengths holding us together, our current failures are displayed on a world scale and fully exacerbated by our president.

Because of Trump, today’s America has long been analyzed as the makings of an empirical fall.

Because of Trump, today’s America has long been remarked as the parallel to a multitude of dystopia—and a multitude of the worst moments in history.

As the election closes, with the heart of New York City and Washington, D.C. boarded up, and the national guard on standby, I am ashamed.

I am ashamed that it is such a close election right now and that we are uncertain of whether or not the next four years will be further cause for depression, division and turmoil among the American people.

And I am ashamed that nearly half of America is choosing to put the rest of us through this—that they are willing to overlook and stand by with a sense of righteousness amid the darkest of times we have yet lived to witness.

Ultimately, I suppose I got my wish—we are living in a moment and era that will be recorded and remembered for decades to come. But it is not rose-colored anymore. I find the pandemic we are living to be both literal and metaphorical, and for the first time in my life, every major headline seems to have a direct effect on the American people and world at large.

I congratulate the Trump administration and its supporters on the history that they have made. But whether or latent or direct, I sympathize more with those of us that are set up to suffer further because of it.

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