We look back for inspiration as we attempt to see the future with a positive outlook.
Looking back this year provides little to inspire…we are still living with the illusionist Donald Trump’s effort to avoid hearing his Father call him a loser (January 6,, 2021) and ending now with an illusionist running for Congress who thought he could get away with a series of lies so deep and wide that a newspaper wondered whether his name really was George Santos.
It makes perfect sense actually because illusion makes things possible, makes life livable, whereas truth destroys the illusion, destroys this make-believe reality and leaves all of us vulnerable…and angry.
You don’t want anger to drive the days of your life. It is bad for your health. It makes you difficult to be around.
We have been writing for the Liberal Party for years…millions of words…in an attempt to provide a perspective on politics and its impact on our lives.
As we have watched and written about the dissolution of so many of the very systems that are the foundation of America’s promise to provide life, liberty, opportunity and the pursuit of happiness to its people, we have become increasingly angry at what has become an increasingly damaging series of illusions.
We want to curb the anger. We try to use history to provide truth, but illusion is everywhere. We as a nation are captured by it and are misled.
We see the public school system in Memphis, Tennessee bringing the teaching of phonics to help its students learn to read. All of the other methods of teaching reading have failed for so long. Are they starting in Kindergarten? No, they are bringing phonics to their high school students because they can’t continue to graduate students who cannot read.
Has this illusion and the failures that continue become the reason we have a national teacher shortage?
Has the Covid pandemic and the mess it has made of teaching so many millions of children become the last straw?
That is a reality, but the deeper truth is that for the past generation the average professional life of teachers ends after five years.
We look at the illusion that the criminal justice system should be colorblind when nothing else in America is.
In New York unbelievable steps are taken to insure this illusion. Our State Legislature naively thinking about racism and not crime, passes a no cash bail law which lets most criminals go with a ticket to return causing crime in New York City streets that we have never seen before. Random crime driven by madness and meanness; people stabbed or beaten at random; thrown off subway platforms or pushed down subway steps. Young men with guns driving around neighborhoods shooting at people for no apparent reason. 149 young people and children have been killed this year. The murder rate in NYC has DOUBLED.
The illusion-based legislation that one way to fight racism is to free criminals of color from a stay at Rikers Island because they cannot meet bail has overwhelmed a new Governor and Mayor who cannot make necessary changes. The Police believe that the public no longer respects them or cares. Arrests are made, but the Police job of insuring safety has been lost to illusion and crime thrives.
Though our medical scientists win Nobel Prizes, when compared to other highly developed countries, our healthcare system, the most expensive in the World, is stuck in the middle of mediocrity.
The Covid Pandemic exposed its weaknesses as nothing else has in the past 50 years. Desperate for life-saving equipment during the first tragic year in 2020, it became apparent that we depended on China for just about every important element of care imaginable…from adequate masks to critical emergency room life-saving equipment. Now the illusion is that Covid is gone, only 300 deaths a day reported, and that the pandemic is gone with it.
The reality is something else. The pandemic is the result of climate change which has altered our atmosphere… though we cannot see it. The icebergs are melting; Greenland is more green than ice-covered; the seas are warmer and higher. Allergies are more potent across the country. Storms more significant and virile. The Covid virus moved through the air as nothing had. Why do we think this is the end when it might only be the beginning? Illusion covers truth.
China, now freed from the strictest government control in the World, is drowning in Covid.
If we thought supply-chain shortages hurt us a year ago – and still do today – wait until the Chinese are so sick that their exports of EVERYTHING dry up and stop coming to America. We are their very best customer. Store shelves everywhere will all be empty. And there will be nothing we can do about it because America no longer produces what it needs.
And finally the illusion that political warfare is the worst it has ever been, that antisemitism in America is new; that all politicians believe in the democracy that elected them; that political parties draw policies based on what is good for the majority, and that Donald Trump caused the latest American divide.
All illusion.
What is real is our need to believe in the American dream; that as a nation of immigrants we’ve seen that dream come true for tens of millions…then, now and for the future.
To enforce that dream there is a kind of American amnesia…an ability to ignore or to “forget” the truths of history.
We fought a Civil War which not only freed slaves but forced significant changes in the economy and with it established the ebb and flow of the North and South that in many ways remains today.
It is no mystery that millions of Americans distrust the American government as it has existed for more than a century and that the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol featured Confederate flags and costumes…even as an institution like West Point removed remaining symbols of the Confederate years from its campus.
Lindbergh and Coughlin built the organization America First, (sound familiar?) to hold mass meetings at Madison Square Garden to fight against America getting involved in the European war. Support of Hitler and antisemitic rants were featured.
When you know the Corporate billions spent annually to influence the votes and the actual existence of American politicians, it is an illusion to believe that political decisions are made honestly and in the best interest of the governed. The reality is that money buys votes even as we argue the strength of American democracy in the acts of election deniers and equate those acts with a weakening of democracy while ignoring the power of money. Illusion!
Donald Trump’s success has overwhelmed the integrity and meaning of the Republican Party. In the 2016 Presidential race it didn’t even bother to develop a party platform. The Republican Party is losing the popular vote count in one Presidential race after another. It depended on the Electoral College vote to elect Trump. It has disappeared in New York City and New York State. It is clear now that the Republican Party wants Trump voters, but not Trump. It is an illusion to think that will matter as long as the Democrats find the leadership to represent its policies.
As we write this we believe the Democratic Party has no such leadership and if they think so, they are living in illusion.
We have tried to move away from the anger brought on by the frustration of watching what once work fail and be ignored. We lack the ability to make change because the education of this country slowly ground to a halt in the 1970’s and what we see now is an element of ignorance which makes illusion possible. If we simply don’t understand what has happened and if we don’t know how to fix it, it is better to believe that nothing has changed.
Nothing is as nakedly evident of this fundamental ignorance than watching this nation of immigrants be unable to establish a real, working, decent, caring national immigration policy. If nothing else, this shows how living in make-believe has weakened the present political structure that is supposed to be able to govern.
One laughs in disbelief that this guy thought he’d get away with it…especially after being elected.
But inside the illusion is this truth: His lies are not illegal and could not prevent him from joining Congress.
We won’t laugh should it happen but we will not be angry either…just sad.
When all is said and done our thoughts go to our Southern border and the agony of those thousands of would be immigrants from Central and South America fleeing from misery, fear and poverty.
They believe in America…a belief that has not changed …ever.
No other country has developed such a belief…such a promise…such a dream.
We believe in history and the truth of that reality. The dream must still be true or it would have disappeared. It did not. No illusion has or can conquer that belief. Our best for the New Year.
“We have been writing for the Liberal Party for years…millions of words…in an attempt to provide a perspective on politics and its impact on our lives.”
I’ve appreciated such writing for years as well. Yet it seems that I and Prof. Rolandi are the only ones who appreciate it enough to comment.
“for the past generation the average professional life of teachers ends after five years “
I find that astonishing and appalling. Is this due to teachers being fed up with the work itself or finding greener pastures ($) elsewhere?
“The pandemic is the result of climate change which has altered our atmosphere”
Where is that documented?
“Greenland is more green than ice-covered;”
Google Earth. which is reasonably kept up to date, shows Greenland to be mostly ice and snow covered.
I fully agree with the commentary about bail reform. I’d guess that if there were to be a referendum on the matter, the latter-day policy would prevail.
The dependence on China for vital items isn’t surprising. Low prices have flushed out competition.
I suppose I’d be inviting a lengthy response upon asking why leadership is emphasized in these essays. What are the flaws in a leaderless legislature wherein each member is free to have one’s policy and legislative bills are “ironed out” via debate?