Institutions
Back in the early 1960’s there was an enormous faith in American institutions. Our parents grew up in the Great Depression. They watched President Roosevelt use the government to try to solve the problems of the economy, and to make life better for working Americans. And then they served in a “just” war. The men joined or were drafted into a national military. Women worked in essential jobs supporting the war effort. Children grew gardens and collected bottles and cans for the “boys”.
And they won the war, and built the “bomb”, and developed a structure to keep the peace. There was the “aspirational” side of it, the United Nations. There was the “practical” structure, the strongest military in the world, enforcing “Pax Americana”. And there was the balance of “mutual assured destruction” between the US and the Soviet Union they made our “enemy” clear, and the outcome of conflict clearly terrifying.
That was emphasized by the “CD” (civil defense) shelter signs on the walls, and the drills that put this first grader in the hallway of Bloomfield Village Elementary near Detroit, head between my knees and arms protecting my head. With pure first-grade logic, I knew that we, the kids, would be OK. We were protected by the wall and our huddled position. But all of the teachers – well they were going to “get it” by the bomb. They were all standing up.
Growing Up
We went to church and joined the Cub Scouts, played little league baseball and rode our bikes until the tires wore out. And we played in the street and came home when the light grew dim. The United States could achieve. President Kennedy said we were going to the moon. We first graders put refrigerator boxes together in the backyard, our Mercury capsules going into space. I got a haircut like my hero, John Glenn. I didn’t realize he was going bald.
With the assassination of President Kennedy, the faith in those institutions took a hit. The vaunted American “system” couldn’t protect our own President in a city in our own nation. And while I didn’t notice it as a second grader, many Americans saw the panic in Dallas and that catastrophic failure in protection as a sign that maybe our institutions weren’t quite as omnipotent as we hoped.
The Civil Rights movement held a mirror to the American dream, showing those pushed down and shoved aside. And like Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson used the government to try to change our nation. It wasn’t just the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts; it was all of the programs in the “Great Society” that tried to end the poverty that was so much a result of racial injustice.
Cracks in the Foundation
But then there was the Vietnam War. Our parents didn’t get it at first. It seemed like just another extension of the “Pax Americana” that they built. But as more Americans came home and raised questions about whether we were on the side of “good”, protests began and our institutions were again in question. Johnson’s “Great Society” was lost in the streets as young people chanted, “The whole world is watching”. And we lost Dr. King, and Bobby Kennedy. We elected a President who promised a peace plan, but then pushed us even farther into war.
We made it to the Moon. For a brief moment, the whole world sat in awe of that “one small step for man”. But then we found the Director of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover, used information to coerce government leaders and had an “alternative lifestyle” that belied his white shirt and black tie demeanor. And there was Watergate. We all discovered that cheating and corruption was commonplace at least in the Nixon administration. And in the mid-1970’s we found out that the CIA was overthrowing democracies and replacing them with dictatorships.
We lost trust in our government’s ability to solve our problems. The “New Deal” faith of our fathers was gone.
Who to Trust
Today we are taught not to trust the Boy Scouts or the Roman Catholic Church or the Little League because kids were molested. We look at our government and see our political leaders boldly lying to us, as if we should simply ignore what they said just a few short years ago. Our era is filled with “alternative facts”. We are teaching our children (and grandchildren) the exact opposite of what our parents taught us. Institutions are not to be trusted.
No wonder conspiracy theories are rampant. If everything we “believed in” was a lie, then perhaps QAnon is the truth. Even the most basic common sense protections to our current epidemic have been filled with doubts. It should be no surprise that there such nostalgia for the hazy memory of the 1950’s life of the past. Many are willing to ignore all that has come in between. Life was much easier to understand in “black and white”, at least as long as you weren’t Black.
So here we are. Our jaded and divided nation faces what perhaps is our greatest crisis. The one thing we know for sure – we cannot go back. The challenges of the future will not be solved by the solutions of the past. And we, as a nation, will need to find some path towards national purpose again. We need to find faith in something. We need to trust.
There really is no alternative. Not if we are to remain the United States of America.
