PRISMATIST

The relentless and courageous Shirley Chisholm wrote, “I don’t love America for what she is, but for what she can become.”  (quoted in The Economist, US edition, 12 October 2024, p. 21)    I think this is true of most Americans, and even many others.  

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There have also forever been those among us who think our country is now and has always been perfect or nearly so, and scorn the notion that there is anything better for us to aspire to.  Clearly their number does not include the current Republican ticket-toppers, though--that presidential candidate pronounced the US “the garbage can of the world” the other day.

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Notice that all the major-party candidates could espouse both of these positions simultaneously and without amendment.  (Well, the Republican presidential nominee might balk at using the feminine pronoun, which he only employs when he intends to derogate or molest the antecedent, but anyway without any other amendment.)

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“How can this be?” I hear you cry.  Easy—the two parties’ candidates have diametrically opposite ideals for what the country can become, and different reasons for adopting the “garbage can” tag.  The President-Eject and his comical sidekick love the country that can become a nation of fearful troglodytes awaiting guidance from Mars-a-Lago, while the Veep and Everybody’s Favourite Uncle share the presumed vision of Representative Chisholm.  But they both love the country for what it can become, and not what it is.

Similarly, one team embraces the “garbage can” image because the US now contains too many folks who have neglected to be white pseudochristians.  The other team is okay with that image because the US now contains the likes of M. Petits-Doigts and Whatever His Name Is These Days and their worshippers.  They don’t say this out loud, but ask around.  Carefully.

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In a few days—maybe before anyone gets around to reading this—the US will sit for its quadrennial group IQ test.  There is an increasing chance that we won’t pass, just as we often haven’t.  Some voters will be frightened of the Ohio caninivores and felinivores, and there is nothing to be done about them.  Others will vote for the party not in office at the moment, which reliably happens when the US is perceived (mistakenly in this case) to be in the downturn stage of a thoroughly normal economic cycle.

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If we get out of this okay, it will because enough folks were able to distinguish between a normal economic cycle and a long-term, maybe existential, threat to everything the US has achieved, believed, aspired to and fought for over a couple of centuries or so.  As a nation, we tend to confuse ingenuity, of which we have always had an ample supply, with sagacity, which we have never displayed very much of.  Since there is insufficient time to teach enough people economics or history, we will have to rely on luck, of which we have had a lot over the years.  But do try not to let Shirley down.