If you’ve been alive and sentient for the past three-plus years, you’ve probably heard the statement, “We are at an inflection point in history” a time or two.
Anytime something is said so often in such a short period of time, it tends to lose impact. But slogans aside, does America’s present condition warrant the kind of urgency associated with invoking a moment as “an inflection point”?
I doubt many people would deny that it does.
Recently, I returned from a two-week, 17-state trip through the Midwest, the South, and the Northeast. In nearly every city and town I passed through, there were recognizable signs of physical deterioration and decline – strip malls with deserted storefronts, vacant lots, dilapidated houses, closed small businesses, roads in poor condition, billboards for personal injury attorneys. One of the few major cities I passed through had a billboard over a busy street that read, “Real men don’t murder.” Dollar General stores were everywhere.
Clearly, de-industrialization, the shift to a globalized economy, and numerous other factors have contributed to the devastation of America which is now so widespread beyond the gleaming metropolitan downtowns and the most affluent suburbs. Stating the obvious, both major political parties have presided over this tragedy and bear some responsibility for making it worse. The question then follows: What can and should be done about it, now?
I submit that one thing we absolutely should not do is send more of the same leaders to Washington, D.C.
We want to thank Andy Schaalman for this Contribution – Please direct yours to Steve@GraniteGrok.com.
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As it so happens, I made a brief stop in D.C. on my recent trip. The stretch of the George Washington Memorial Parkway in northern Virginia, which lines the Potomac River between the Francis Scott Key Bridge and I-495, was, by far, the most decrepit stretch of road I passed along the way. For several miles, construction necessitated the narrowing of a two-lane road into one lane, hemmed in tight on both sides by traffic cones. If you had no short-term memory, you would never have suspected this was all just a few miles from our national seat of government and many of our nation’s most iconic monuments. But it was, and it is.
And in a way, this is a microcosm of what has happened to America. Everyone who follows American politics even casually understands that D.C. is effectively its own ecosystem, insulated and isolated from the rest of the country. But when you see the manifestations up close, it is a splash of cold water. It should come as no surprise that we have reached this stage. For more than 20 years, America’s leadership class has embarked on “forever wars,” mushroomed the national debt, destroyed our borders, narrowed the roads to opportunity and upward mobility, and poisoned the national discourse with criticism of the country as it is…all while telling ordinary Americans that their declining living standards and dissipating hopes for a better future are their fault.
To stem this tide, we need to do many things, but we must elect leaders who will work for the interests of American citizens first. I’m supporting Lily Tang Williams in her run for the Second Congressional District, because I know she understands what is at stake for New Hampshire and for America. She is an outsider who will fight every day for her constituents, and she is totally unmoved by the kinds of policies and abstractions which refuse to acknowledge or address reality.
The Biden administration and the media tell us every day that “democracy is at stake.” But this “inflection point in history” is actually much bigger than that. America is at stake.
