The New American Lion
“I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.”
That is a quote attributed to Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto who planned the attack on Pearl Harbor, which cost 2,500 American lives.
Yamamoto opposed an invasion attack on the United States, having become familiar and fond of the US while getting his education at Harvard. However, as a dutiful soldier he crafted and executed a successful assault that changed the future of America.
Politics is sometimes described as war without bullets; I prefer the more “art of the possible” aspirational mission, but it’s not a bad idea to compare and contrast the thinking, experience, history, and outcomes of real war with political conflict.
I have no magical insight, nor do I work with any campaign or have sought inside info on tracking data. We know polls are snapshots of the moment, not the outcome. They inform but do not lead. So what will happen tomorrow?
I don’t believe the nation will re-elect Donald Trump. He is a profoundly immoral and dishonest man, who has conned a base of support with lies and manipulation. More work is needed to unpack the reasoning behind his consistent but unmoving support numbers. However, the result is a GOP that is brain dead, having mortgaged their principles and long-standing positions for a corporate tax cut and conservative judges. I think the GOP’s own current court packing exercise will in the long run backfire, because the nation doesn’t want to go backwards.
I wonder, however, if we will see a new political statement emerge tomorrow, and a new political realignment that is truly more congruent with the values and aspirations of The People. American is not Donald Trump.
TGOP thinks progressive is a bad word, but America has always, even in its most painful and broken moments, stood for progress. Expanding rights, expanding freedoms, pushing technology and protecting ideas have advanced the progress of humanity. America is becoming more beautiful every day, not less. The march of freedom that is the bedrock of our nation cannot be turned back.
With the murder of George Floyd many Americans finally understood what too many of their brothers and sisters of color live every day: an outright denial of freedom. Floyd was denied life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. We watched his last breath call for his mother while a man trained and sworn to protect the public safety extinguished his life. It’s different when it’s real, and not on Law and Order, isn’t it? The nation was finally moved.
A pandemic grips America, yet instead unifying the country, Trump lies and lies and lies, turning a crisis into a catastrophe. Because of him, hundreds of thousands of Americans have died, and even now we see him conscript some of his very supporters to illness and possible death with his rallies-for-photo-op, and abandon leadership in favor of a deaths-for-the-economy mindset.
There isn’t a dollar sign in our founding documents nor principals. The signers of the Declaration of Independence pledged their wealth and their lives for something bigger. Trump has never scarified anything for the greater good; he never will.
Americans can and will sacrifice for the greater good, when we are well led. Instead, the nation is swimming in Covid-19 with no end in sight, and as a result our fundamental freedoms and lives are at risk. Trump is the coward he has always been, and in this war he has run and hid behind stock market numbers and false choices between the economy and public health. We are less free because of him.
So how does all this play out? How does the mixture of social justice and pandemic play out in the nation’s mind? We will see, but looping back to Yamamoto’s quote, I am wondering if we are about to see a new American lion roar.
Young people, like my children and first-time voters, are engaged like never before. They liked Bernie, remember? It wasn’t the Senator’s age, it was his ideas that caught their attention. They also see the fundamental threat to their own future by the regressive thinking of Trumpism/GOP. They worry the planet will die in their lifetimes. They have seen peers shot up in schools. They are diverse like no other generation, smart, and voting. In numbers.
Suburban voters, women in particular, who live by the values that run directly counter to what Trump stands for are appalled. Would you raise your child to behave like Trump? Would any public company hire or keep hired a man who does what Trump does on a daily basis? Do you want your freedoms diminished by political and social views of others far from your neighborhood?
It’s not that suburbs are sanitized oases. They are micro-economies and micro-social systems that in most places are educated, working, and acutely aware of whats happening around the world. Those suburban moms are raising children in a world with new awareness about diversity and the beauty of all of America. They don’t want their children’s lives to go backward. They don’t want to sacrifice their parents for “the economy, stupid.”
And perhaps, ironically and spectacularly, the Union will be saved by one group:
Black people.
Aside from Native Americans, what group of our fellow citizens has endured so much over the course of our nation’s history and yet still has given so much to America?
How much pain, tears, humiliation, death, abuse, and captivity has this group experienced first hand, yet they led our nation forward on civil rights with peaceful marches and Good Trouble?
What group has in fact lived the full arch of the Founding Fathers words about freedom? Yes, Dr. King knew Jefferson had slaves. But he also knew what Jefferson started in his time, and King and others affirmed and fought for America’s promise in King’s time.
Is that not the most astonishing thing?
Even with what is a greater level of racism than I could have imagined reaching all the way to the US Capitol, look at the incredible and unstoppable contribution by Black America to our national culture, in music, dance, literature, religion, hope. They say pain is the artists greatest fuel. The body of work is breathtaking, and has made America richer on so many levels.
Black America looked at the Democratic field, and in South Carolina said “Joe”. This is not a group that falls into line because one person says so. There is way too much grit and substance under the surface for black Americans to just give away their vote. They have earned their voice in America, and Joe earned their vote. For all the right reasons. And thus the rest of the Democratic primary candidates were done.
Of all groups, Black America will not go backward. And I hope through the incredible pain and agony of George Floyd and all the others, the rest of the nation has a new awakening. I do. I see my friends of color more deeply and more lovingly than ever before. It took too long, but so be it.
So I wonder if we will see a massive new political base emerge tomorrow. A wave that may vote Blue but is really very American. One that makes a clear statement that America will not be dragged backward. One that repudiates all the dishonesty, racism, and hate of Trumpism and the TGOP. And one that rejects the failure of trickle-down economics that has eviscerated the American middle class and turned good people into greedy and selfish acolytes of the upgrade rather than the soul of the nation.
And I hope there will be some serious questions asked, and an effort to find common ground and greater understanding of others. A rejection of celebrity culture and an opening of hearts to our fellow Americans.
America’s promise is always to look forward. To embrace and move the ideals of freedom forward, more refined, more expansive. Some may have feared the hope and change underway in America. Trump and his enablers manipulated those fears, and weaponized our best values against other Americans. Joined by a philosophy that has detested FDR’s New Deal ideas and a cadre of silent money that seeks to silence our voices. Because they know they don’t have the votes.
Tomorrow I think we will have the votes. Perhaps the past four years were inevitable. Trump is all our fault. Because it’s our country. We should own it and learn from it. Perhaps we have realized how much we have taken for granted, and a whole new generation of votes will rise up.
The most powerful tool in the world for human freedom — the vote — will assure ourselves and the world that America will always look forward, and never go back.
May the new lion roar.
