Letters from Linden
by JACK LINDEN
For years I have followed the political back and forth of the American people with fascination.
Generally there has been some semblance of a theme or set of issues over a period of time, normally at least 10 years. But the last 10 years have been totally different from any that I have studied or recall. I can’t figure out what Americans want.
The decade started out as a rejection of what some thought was the total immorality of Americans and especially the politicians and more importantly, Bill Clinton. Americans did not look at the economic growth America had attained, nor did they look at the working relationship between the president and the Congress.
We followed up that election with an overwhelming Republican Congress and president and Americans seemed to be satisfied. It seems the vast majority of Americans did not question what the president and the Congress were doing. We cut taxes and went to war. We said we wanted freedom and liberty. What we got was an intrusion into our phones, email, and reading material. We are willing to stand in lines to board an airplane, even to the point of having to take off our shoes.
We hear people now talking about losing our liberty and our freedom. There are those who want to “return to the values of the Founding Fathers” and the basic principles. Unfortunately, that is all rhetoric. When those same people are asked what principles they are talking about, most can’t point them out in the Constitution. What they are basically talking about is some simplistic notion. Liberty and freedom sound good when it is coming from a platform, but when we start asking what it means, there are a lot of people who have only one answer – freedom from government or taxation or regulations.
In the last decade a lot of people thought that their elected officials were the answer to their desire to achieve the simple life. Life was simple back when we pretty much knew what was going on in the world because our world was basically a circle of about 25 to 50 miles. What was going on in Africa or Europe did not affect us because we didn’t know about it. We were able to marry and settle down in our little towns and the world was serene. When those we elected did not measure up to that “simplicity,” we decided to oust them and find others who would once again help us return to the simple life.
In 2008, we elected a new Congress and a new president. The problem was that we awoke and the president was not like us. He put forth a program that forced us to look at ourselves and what was happening in the United States. Life was not simple any longer. Everyone was not doing so well and the institutions that we thought were honest and financially sound were no longer that. Our simple outlook that was based on “bad things happen over there, not here” was suddenly broken and we had to start looking at our way of life and its fallacies and we did not like it.
As a result, we ousted those we thought would give us a simple life and elected those that, again, we thought would help us return to simplicity.
It is becoming clearer that Americans want assurances. They do not want complex matters or more importantly, they want simple answers to very complex problems. The village that they want is not there, but they are yearning for it.
Memories are wonderful, but we can’t go back.
