The Sum of Its Parts

Most rot begins at the edges and moves towards the center.

If the center is rock solid, it can hold against the encroaching decay. If not, it loses the sum of its parts, it submits, crumbling, losing the battle as the center collapses.

There is no question that our political and government systems are a mess and seem to be getting worse daily. But beyond that, the majority of Americans feel that something has happened…and that the country is no longer the same…no longer what it has been.

The differences between the haves and have nots is growing by staggering degrees – not seen since the two-century old Industrial Revolution. The middle class, formed after the Second World War, has been shattered and is struggling to return. They have again turned to unions and to the aggressive tactic of the labor strike to fight for a bigger share of the profits that have been hoarded by corporate leadership.

Crime in the street has become a constant; the Police no longer in a position to prevent it…they play catch the crooks after the crime. Hit and run drivers have increased in number; mass shootings with assault rifles have increased; random, excessive shoplifting has become commonplace causing major department stores and local drug stores to close entirely because they are being robbed at will.

These are among the most apparent edges of rot. Go a little deeper and you find others.

According to test scores both before and after the pandemic, school kids are learning much less. No one in or out of politics talks about the failure of public schools to teach our children not just during the pandemic but for more than 50 years.

The Liberal Party has said again and again that history teaches us unequivocally that great nations fall from the heights- and never return – because they do not teach their children.

We are seeing that right now as the children we have failed to teach are now millennials. Some have chosen to seek and gain public office. It doesn’t matter that they never studied history, economics, politics or civics.

But it does matter that they do not have the understanding of government to act with common sense. They want to accomplish changes that are meaningful and possible, if they only knew how to make them happen in a realistic way.

But they don’t know how and they won’t accept that fact.

The dependence on our education system to provide the next generation and the next and the next with what they need to assume leadership no longer works. ‘Common sense’ only exists with knowledge to produce any sense at all.

We have ‘old men’ running for President. We have younger men wanting but unable to do what has been natural – push the older generation aside.

This generational failure is not only true in politics, it is true in big business as well. Disney, failing to find a CEO who can continue in the successful footsteps of Bob Iger has brought him back as chairman from a three year retirement. He had picked his successor twice. They failed. Now he’s back. This is the best example.

The generational failure in New York City and State is spectacular.

Both legislative bodies are dominated by the Democratic Party as the Republican Party has all but disappeared. The overwhelming majority of both bodies is millennial-aged. Their desire to end racism and stop the destructive results of climate change, is enviable. But their total lack of knowledge blurs the mind: end bail for those breaking the law who happen to be black or brown and cannot afford bail and that will end racism. Never mind the ensuing crime.

Close major avenues and boulevards in the boroughs that provide commercial access across the city to stop traffic flow and therefore decrease fossil fuel use. Never mind the essential madness of the proposition.

These are the edges of systemic decay closer to the center of who we are…visual evidence you can see and feel that make for unease and ill will.

But there are edges much closer to the center that are not as visible but have produced the rot growing in the center…the rot that will eventually destroy all that exists.

Years ago, the President of Teachers College at Columbia University explained that the “best women” no longer went into teaching. He said that they had been entering law and medical school…dental school and business schools.

As for their traditional role as Mothers, they have chosen to use their enormous talents to “do it all.” Did anyone expect that men would help take their place?

The rot that has entered the public school system is the result of years of parental neglect: children no longer respect the position of teacher…curse at them, grossly disobey them and in some cases, attack them.

We have a teacher shortage because fewer and fewer people want the aggravation of teaching. We don’t even have to mention the matter of money.

The edges of rot began when societal changes made women able to choose their lives in a very different and important way.

It might be unfair to suggest that parenting became a pacifier for the baby, a toy computer for the tot, an IPhone for the student in school and a credit card for the kid in high school.

It certainly was not “sit down here and let me see your homework.”

The public school system should have recognized it and taken steps to replace the involvement of women – Mothers – who were no longer at home.

It did not. It has not. People do not change. Systems that fail must be changed.

THE CENTER COLLAPSES

And finally, we arrive at the core… the center of a nation designed and developed as no other has ever been.

What’s happened?

We always argued. Eleanor Roosevelt said her fellow Democrats did that best among themselves. People going into politics were “designed” to argue. But we were always able to work through differences to arrive at an acceptable midpoint.

Now it seems that disagreements about our society have turned to hate.

The inherent fury over so many areas of life makes it seem as if the rot itself has become our new reality.

There are consistent attempts to show that Americans can feel and understand each other’s needs and work together to bring freedom, fairness and equality to the surface and then support it.

But that’s all just a game to cover an insistent truth.

Inequality and separateness were built into our nation’s beginning. They and the racism that still exists that will never go away because is has become a caste system so deep that it lives at the core of all of our damaged and failing systems.

We remain racist despite all the diversity we see in our public media. Think back to all the Confederate flags, Confederate costumes and signs on January 6th at the Capitol in Washington, DC

We rail against our out- of- control immigration system which is causing so many problems. But we have failed for decades to fix it. Policy suggestions come and go…are offered and ignored. That fact and racist underpinnings and not open borders are the real reasons we have migrants walking for thousands of miles to get here without any of the controls which should exist but still don’t. You can go through Mr. Trump’s and now Joe Biden’s border walls with a hacksaw.

There is work for today’s migrants. There was work for the migrants who came to America at the beginning of the 1900’s when we established quotas for Europeans from Italy and Ireland. They were coming in boatloads for the same reasons that South and Central Americans are coming today. They were escaping from living without hope. America was the land where hope lived and thrived.

There was no wall to stop those European migrants.

They simply swam ashore. Nobody sent them back.

Can we deal with an America where the rot on the edges has reached the core which seems hopelessly scarred and weakened?

Does that center now represent the sum of its parts all of which clearly need serious, thoughtful, knowledgeable, change?

Where will the leadership come from? A Republican Party which never bothered to write a Party Policy in a Presidential election and seems committed to a damaged man with a clear hate for the government he has led.

A Democratic Party which is too corrupt in too many places to even imagine what a Presidential Primary might look like if it needed one?

We could ask if we have the courage to recognize reality but courage is not the issue.

The better question is do we care enough about what exists to change it.

Do we care enough to defy history and work to return America to our previous position as World leader?

Will we care enough to involve ourselves in activities designed for change that have common sense and will work?

All we get now is talk…which is cheap.

If we really decide none of it is worth the effort, look carefully at Washington, DC.

And know you’ll be looking in the mirror.