Day 36 of Nat'l Emergency: What Will Be Its Legacy?

The yarhzeit memorial candles flickered throughout Wednesday night and Thursday for Gilda’s and my parents. Her father died in 1958. Her mother in 2005. My mother in 1996. My father in 1998.

Born between 1901 and 1924, their generation has been dubbed the Greatest, a designation earned mostly for their contributions during World War II. But they experienced and endured so much more in crafting a legacy for their children and grandchildren.

It is not too presumptuous to ask, what type of America will we bequeath to our offspring? Will we match up to the Greatest Generation’s legacy? Consider what transpired during their formative years through 1971, the year the first of them reached 70, the biblical assignment of what constituted a full life. 

As they entered their teenage years the world exploded into war. Even before the United States aided in ending the The Great War (World War I), the Spanish Flu ravaged America and societies around the globe. A decade later the stock market crashed, the Depression began, the Dust Bowl exhausted America’s breadbasket. Lucky ones, like my mother and father and Gilda’s father, managed to emigrate from Europe (Gilda’s mother was born in New York). 

The Greatest Generation defeated Nazi Germany, Italian fascism and imperial Japan.  

Prior to World War II the United States had tilted toward isolationism. But with victory came the assumption of several mantles—liberator and peacemaker, supporter of progressive democracy and enlightened capitalism, developer and exporter of ideas in medicine, science and technology.

Despite the Korean War, McCarthyism, the Cold War with its capacity for nuclear annihilation, political assassinations and the Viet Nam war, the Greatest Generation soldiered on through the post-war economic boom, the civil rights movement, the space program and cultural transformation perhaps best exemplified by the move to suburbia, rock and roll and the sexual revolution.

The Greatest Generation left a global legacy that included the conquering of many diseases, the genesis of the computer age, the rebuilding of war-ravaged regions, the formation of global pacts for defense, health, trade and care of refugees.

All that and more are threatened by a pandemic that descended during a time of retraction from the belief that the United States has a role, an obligation, to lead the world through partnerships, not through isolated example.

Daily we are advised our future will be different from our present, be it by social distancing measures in restaurants, theaters and sports arenas, or through greater reliance on virtual shopping and workplace employment. Almost all aspects of life will be affected.

Truly transformative changes—legacies—require bold action. Will COVID-19 prompt America to finally adopt universal health care and increase the availability of trained medical personnel in rural areas? With Internet access seen as vital for education and employment, will we finally eliminate Web connectivity deserts in our cities and rural areas? With so many unemployed and the need for infrastructure upgrading of our roads, bridges, airports, dams, harbors and tunnels, will we create a Works Progress Administration à la the Depression era New Deal program that employed millions to build up America? With the Internet forcing faster consolidation in the retail industry, will we find new uses for shuttered shopping centers including affordable housing and low risk penal institutions? With the increased realization of the importance of healthcare workers and educators, as well as public servants who provide police, fire, ambulance, correction services, transportation and waste management, will we more appropriately compensate these contributors critical to our collective existence? Will we take steps necessary to flatten the curve of disparity between the incomes of the wealthiest and the remaining 90% of society?

Will any or all of this happen? There is a streak of individualism in the country that shares the same genes with isolationism and averseness to big government. After 80 years of Social Security there remain diehards who oppose it. The pandemic has exposed the vulnerabilities we all live with. We will never be able to guarantee a new virus strain will not emerge some day, somewhere. But we would be able to smooth out any impact it might have if we have in place a more equal society.

2016 Election Will Test Voter Intelligence

Whither America? Whither the conscience and soul of America? 

A campaign based on negativity leavened with bombastic claims without details of how we are going to fix our problems and how we would pay for any fix, yet all will be terrific, has all but officially captured the nomination of a once proud and revered Republican Party. Voters in GOP primaries and caucuses, including many independents and disaffected Democrats, have latched onto the proverbial “pig in a poke.” 

Most reality shows last about four months. The danger this election cycle is that Americans, so used to viewing The Bachelor/Bachelorette or The Amazing Race, might think they are watching a season of Survivor or The Biggest Loser while the true reality is that the United States would be the biggest loser if Donald Trump ascends to the presidency. The founding principles of the country might not survive his term of office.

To many, Trump is a candidate to be scorned and derided, to be ridiculed, but mostly, to be feared, not because he is so unqualified and peripatetic in his views and opinions,  but rather because of what it says about the American public’s willingness to support someone who appeals not to their hopes and aspirations but to their prejudices, anger and resentments. 

Instead of a nation of laws and equal opportunity, we are descending into a nation that reviles any institution that differs with our individual views. The misogynists among us have been emboldened by Trump’s attacks on women. Those opposed to marriage between the races have blasted Old Navy’s use of a photo of an interracial family in an ad (http://nyti.ms/26UWLMQ). Religious extremists of varied faiths decry the Supreme Court decision permitting same-sex marriage. They believe the Bible supersedes the Constitution. Unless you are descended from Native Americans, you are the progeny of immigrants. Yet Trump has stoked xenophobia. Respect for our military suffered a blow when Trump demeaned Sen. John McCain and other prisoners of war for being captured. Trump has questioned long-standing alliances such as NATO and raised doubts about the supremacy of civilian control over the military (according to The New York Times, he would empower “military leaders over foreign affairs specialists in national security debates” (http://nyti.ms/23pBN3X).  

It is indisputable we have bifurcated into a nation of haves and have nots. Equally true is that the population has segmented into groups with no memory or historical context for the evil demagogues, both foreign and domestic, can perpetuate and those who recall or remember the history of the not too distant past. 

This campaign will test the intelligence of the electorate. It will pit against each other stark differences in tone and substance. Will the public vote to roll back decades of progress in equality and economic opportunity, environmental and product protection, American leadership in the world, or will we opt for barriers and repeal based on a demagogue’s populist rantings?

Sadly, our nation has a history of turning its back on the future. Jim Crow laws followed emancipation. Isolationism and anti-Semitism stoked by the likes of Father Coughlin’s radio broadcasts followed victory in World War I. McCarthyism followed our ascendancy as the premiere power in the world after the second world war. 

The central question of the November election will be, which group of Americans will tip the balance—those who reject the last 80 years of American leadership, or those who continue to believe the United States can be an example for all nations?