Restoring the "Great" American Dream

All of Donald Trump's delusional talk about our need to “Make America Great Again” reminded me of this 2010 Charlie Rose interview with Fareed Zakaria. Zakaria made the point that America's glory days of the '50s and '60s were aberrational because of the historic moment in which the world found itself.

America had led the Allied effort to defeat Nazi and Japanese militarism. Europe and Japan had been decimated by war so we essentially had no competition in the realm of global manufacture. We financed Europe with the Marshall Plan, which meant we were propping up a large part of our customer base. All of this contributed to the triumphant rise of America as the world's great global economic power.

 

But Europe recovered and Japan rose to become one of our greatest sources of competition – especially in cars and tech. By the 1970s we'd begun feeling the impact of this recovery. What the nativist, jingoest “America First” crowd fail to understand is that American supremacy wasn't the natural order of things. It was largely an accident of history.

Donald Trump won the presidency based on his promises to “Make America Great Again.” This can never happen because the unique circumstances that made it possible after WWII will never be repeated. So the centerpiece of Trump's campaign is a sham, just like the man himself. Will the American people ever catch on and vote this reality TV star off the island?

I Had No S. E. Hint

It wasn't until at least a few years after I read The Outsiders as a high school assignment that I realized its author S.E. Hinton was female. It didn't matter to me when I found out, but as her editor suggested, it may have put me off of the book before I ever gave it a try had I known. Seems reasonable to suspect that as a teenage boy in the late 1970s I may have fallen for the unconscious (to me) trope that “girls can't write about things I care about.”

I'm glad I didn't know. Such provinciality may have shut me out of a still-memorable read. I can't say I remember it as great literature, but I did really like it and for once, a book didn't automatically suck just because I had to read it for class.  Pretty heady stuff for a public school district in the southwestern Ohio of my era. My enjoyment pretty much continued apace with Hinton's follow-up novels, That Was Then, This Is Now and Rumble Fish.  

  

Care for God's Creation and Our Common Home

I'd been reading about it in our church bulletin for a couple of years; it'd always piqued my curiosity but I'd never pulled the trigger on it. I finally decided to do just that and attended a meeting of the “Care for God's Creation” ministry. As it's a group that focuses largely on environmental concerns, I wasn't surprised that it seems to be composed (as far as I can tell so far) of left-leaning tree huggers. My people.

There were eight or ten of us and the group seemed to be pleasantly surprised that there were two new people including myself. The other appeared to be a twenty-something college kid; I'm in my early fifties.

The two of us sat and listened, trying to get a handle on what this group is all about. Several items were discussed including a St. Vincent DePaul ministry clothing drive, ongoing fundraising activities for a sister parish in Haiti and the then-upcoming “Dekalb Beloved Community Dinner.”

The latter is a monthly ecumenical thing that rotates among several churches in our town. It's been going on for just the past two years and was inspired by Martin Luther King. According to the King Center, King’s Beloved Community “is a global vision, in which all people can share in the wealth of the earth. Racism and all forms of discrimination, bigotry and prejudice will be replaced by an all-inclusive spirit of sisterhood and brotherhood.” Last night, I attended that for the first time as well.

It was one of these deals where one is encouraged to bring a dish to pass. I'd made a simple but awesome artichoke dip but unfortunately, I was about an hour late, having misread the start time. As I arrived, everyone was finishing up their dinner. Let's just say I was somewhat tardy with my appetizer.

A few minutes after I arrived, the entire group began talking about the questions they'd been given an hour earlier to discuss amongst themselves at their dinner tables. The main topic was the Trump administration's immigration policy. Not surprisingly, most of this group with peace, love and understanding as its compass seemed to be politically liberal. What conservatives seem to have against those things, I don't know, but it seems to be something.

The questions as I can best remember them were:

How diverse do you think Dekalb's population is?

Do you know anyone who's personally impacted by Trump's new rules?

What do you feel you can do to help?

The more or less universal sympathies seemed to be that the races don't mix as much as people would like, Trump's agenda is all wrong and that it would be nice to get involved with the sizable Mexican population of St. Mary's (the other Catholic church in town – my own is Christ the Teacher University Parish, associated with Northern Illinois University.)

My understanding is that the local Muslim community is interested in hosting an upcoming dinner, but that they're limited in the space in which to accommodate it. With Herr Trump in office, it certainly seems a good time to reach out to them. Hopefully it can happen soon.

I was at least partly inspired to attend the CFG'sC meeting by reading Pope Francis' papal encyclical on the environment, On Care for our Common Home. Mystifyingly, many Christian churches – especially evangelical ones – seem to be disinterested or openly hostile to environmental concerns. Given that God graced us with (just one) earth to dwell upon, I have a hard time fathoming how they seem to think that treating it like an open sewer is consistent with his will.

Details aside, in OCFOCH, the pope doesn't say anything I didn't already know but the details are pretty extraordinary. It's actually kind of sciency.  It was refreshing to see a Christian leader talk common sense about the environment and cast the problems therein in the light of mankind's sins against God, which is precisely what's going on.  To all but the wicked and stupid, the severe degradation of the environment is obvious and must be countered.

I hope to do my small part in assisting that effort, as well as helping with the whole “peace, love and understanding” thing by becoming part of Dekalb's Beloved Community.