The America That Could Have Been

I couldn't care less about what kind of demographics America ends up having, racially or otherwise. In fact, I'll go one step beyond that -- I don't think America will be able to reach its full potential as long as any one race has a de facto headlock on determining the direction of its politics or its culture. To further clarify and de-mince my words: once White America is no longer in power by default, the country's going to be much better off.

Sound radical? Actually, what I think is radical is the backward-bending that white people have gone to in order to make sure they retain enough of the majority to stay in power, and even further to rationalize those actions. From the gerrymandering of Congressional districts to the flat-out racist tactics of the recent Presidential election, there is a large faction of this country that is deathly afraid of having to share the country's steering wheel with hands that have even the slightest tint of brown in them.

Full disclosure: I say this as someone who identifies as a white man. Of course, as with anyone, there's some uncertainty and wiggle room in my real genetic racial profile, but for the record, this much I can verify. I'm most definitely half eastern European (my maternal grandparents were WWII refugees from Latvia), one quarter Scotch/Irish... and through a quirk of family history, one quarter that I'm not at all sure about. But regardless of origin, I do know that my non-Latvian ancestors were middle-America, blue-collar white folks. I specify this just so you don't think I have something to personally gain from the rise of minorities (and I'm glad to say that it sounds increasingly stupid to my ears to use that term for the entire non-white population).

One of the many rallying cries we've heard this past year, both here and across the pond during the whole Brexit mess, is that we have to take steps to "preserve our way of life". As if the continuity of culture is automatically something that people should strive to keep, as their birthright. So let's unpack what this one little phrase means... It means that the way we've been doing things has value, simply because it's the way we've been doing things. I can't say I agree. The America of the past -- the one that supposedly was so great that it needs to be made that way again -- was one of redlining ... burning rivers... 16-hour workdays... "the love that dare not speak its name"... "a woman’s place"... children being "seen, not heard"... Manifest Destiny... Jim Crow. One thing all those abominations of thought from the past have in common is that they're the sorts of things that taking steps to preserve "your way of life" really means.

What I see in America today is the impending endgame of this national attitude. Everyone wishes for things to be better for their children, correct? So what do you do when your continued way of living -- for example, a coal-burning, climate-change denying, waste-driven society -- is in direct opposition to those improvements happening? Do you hold back your children -- and their grandchildren -- by beholding them to the same traditions and norms that you grew up with? Do you not see how contradictory that is? When you think about it, it's no different from bullying, which is something I'm already thinking I'm going to have to address in my next entry. But the underlying question -- the neverending whine of the bully -- is the same: Why should you have it better than I did?

Until about 8pm on this past Election Day, I could see the future of America clearly. At least, I was clear on the way I wanted it to go, and HRC seemed to be on the right track. I could see America founding a new future on alternative energy, inventing and manufacturing all kinds of new technologies to bring clean water to dry lands, and non-emission power to wildernesses. We would be a center for not only manufacturing the necessary instruments to make these things reality, but to export the very process itself to other countries. This wouldn't take the form of an invasive process that would usurp the power of heritage and culture from other countries... it would merely make it so that people living there wouldn't have to spend most of their time not dying from hunger, poverty, or thirst. Any social adjustments that would be made out of that change would be honestly earned.

Look, America. We have the capability to not only set the standard for the wired, clean country of the future, but we could change our main industries to exporting that knowledge and tech to other countries. We could fuel our economy by shoring up our infrastructure, and then showing the rest of the world how to do it right. Smart power grids, ecologically sound roads and bridges, refined wireless communication and power transmission... we could be at the vanguard of it all. But what did we vote for instead? A President who won the election on promises of re-opening coal mines, expanding oil fields and pipelines, and fracking the hell out of everything. Basically, running the country like a business, the inevitable outcome of capitalism run amok.

Why did people fall for this world-ruining, backward-facing tactic? One of the many answers, I fear, is because of the phrase "it's what our family's done for generations". I'm sure that idea has nostalgic value, but the world is different now. We have to worry about everyone, not just ourselves. Just as every other country should be doing. We should be acting as one world. What we need now is a sustainable path toward the future, and even though it may contain more change than most people are comfortable with accepting, we were heading that direction with the Obama administration.

That was the first in a series of steps that would lead us toward what I see as the future: a world where, in terms of genetics, love has won. People no longer have children with people they're assigned to by class, or because of mere proximity and race, but because they love them. This will inevitably result there being no one majority race; everyone will have a varied and rich multitude of heritages, the world unified by an adaptable infrastructure that will last for generations. We'll work with nature instead of in defiance of it, powering our lives and innovations with light from the sun, the wind, and the earth itself, and take our water for drinking and agriculture right out of the air.

Make no mistake, that's where we're going. We'll get there eventually, if for no other reason that the isolationist, head-in-the-sand climate denial track we're backtracking down just isn't sustainable. At some point, we're going to have to start acting like the caretakers of the Earth, which is the mantle we have taken upon ourselves by our past actions. The only question is whether we're going to continue to put that delicate future in the hands of morons who will continue to look to the past (and their own personal interests) and hold us there as long as we can, perhaps until the climate itself makes it harder for us to survive, or whether we're going to trust in our collective intellect, pivot our way of life and ensure that "the way we've always done things" becomes "the way we're doing things from now on".