"Fast away the old year passes" as the old carol goes. And it is at this time of the year that my thoughts turn to family and friends who have left us over the years and the memories of them and the times we shared. And I marvel and grieve at how the world has changed over the decades of my life.
Born in 1946, my first experience of society and my fellow humans was shaped by the era of peace (save for the Cold War) and prosperity that was the 1950's. America was governed by men and women who had endured the hardships of the Depression and the horrors of a World War. As their sons and daughters returned to peacetime America, the unifying ethos was to make the world better for the generations yet unborn. The Republicans and Democrats squabbled and fought on the floors of Congress but when the day was done, they were still fellow citizens and the pettiness and acidity of political discourse were left behind the doors of Congress.
The 1960's was a decade not dissimilar to the one we are about to close the books on. They began with an horrendous act with the assassination of the young John F. Kennedy and the inchoate war in Vietnam was about to split the country apart. It was a decade of violent civil unrest across the nation marked by two more horrible assassinations, Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy. The realization that the average citizen when joined by thousands of fellow citizens could bring down a president (Lyndon Johnson) and turn the nation against an unjust war gave rise to the political activists of both sides who would become the leaders of the country in the years to come. And as positions polarized and the far right became the bitter enemy of the far left the seeds were sown for the eventual disintegration of political comity. The coming together for the betterment of the nation was becoming a quaint notion with no basis in reality.
Fast forward to today, December 30, 2009. The noble goal of serving one's country by serving in government is also now a quaint notion. Over the intervening years from the late 1960's through the rise of the "Silent Majority", the Christian right, the call for the return to "family values", and most importantly the so-called "Southern strategy" of the Republican party, our country lost its understanding of the commonweal which is what makes a nation one nation. Instead, we have become a nation divided. And those divisions are inflamed not only by the radicals on the right and on the left but by the incendiary rantings of people like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Glenn Beck.
The great statesmen of the past who led out country are know replaced by the likes of Senators Jim Demint, Mitch McConnell, John McCain, Joe Lieberman, et al, and by members of the House like Michelle Bachman, John Boehner, Pete Hoekstra, and dozens of others whose only goal is to destroy the Obama presidency and return themselves to power. I have never seen nor heard such vitriol, bitterness, mutual disrespect and out-right hatred in all my years.
Writers and commentators have been asking what this first decade of the 21st century should be called. My choice is the Decade of Despair. I can only hope and pray that somehow we will find our moral bearings once again because unless our leaders come together to solve the problems facing us in the coming years both domestic and foreign, the future of America and the world is not very promising.
Happy New Year.