It’s hard to know the right thing to do these days.
Hard to plan for the long term when the short term looks so bleak.
Hard to remember which way the moral universe arcs when it seems to be bending back on itself.
Hard to trust the process when so many people seem to be finding ways to cut it short to enrich and empower themselves.
Hard to believe in the trustworthiness of our institutions, or the honor of our leaders, or the courage of a loyal opposition, when none of those things seem to matter. When it’s not clear they even exist anymore.
It’s not clear to me what’s going to happen in the next year, or six months, or six weeks. But for the first time in my life, I see the approaching election and I’m not comfortable about the results. Not because I don’t think my candidate will win, but because a nontrivial segment of the population seems okay with the idea of ignoring the results. Because people who should know better seem to think the results shouldn’t matter.
I believe our Constitution is still strong. But that’s mostly because I know and trust many of the people who are sworn to support and defend it. Those we’ve elected to lead them? Not so much. Those we might elect to replace them, assuming the nation chooses to abide by the expressed will of the people? Not much more.
Because courage–the whole reason I started this site–seems to be largely missing among our national leadership.
And I’ve begun to wonder whether maybe I haven’t been worried enough. Because even if this fall passes without incident, we’ve set precedents in the last few years that will change how our nation sets policy and makes decisions for generations.
A friend of mine lay it out in stark terms earlier today, suggesting that in the years to come, What did you do then? will be a common question. And it occurred to me that I kept my head down and got my job done and raised my kids and tried to weather the storm is not the answer I want to give.
Maybe we should all strive to have a better answer. As hard as that answer is to find, maybe we owe it to those who come after. They’ll be the ones asking the question, after all.