Greatest Nation on Earth?

I don’t know if America will every again be regarded as the greatest of all the world’s nations! I don’t even know if we ever got to that lofty spot. I know that we liked to think so. At the moment, America is seriously crippled and we have a long way to go to claw our way to the top again.

by Charlie Leck

On Saturday, November 5, three days before Election Day, I predicted here that Donald Trump would likely win the race for the presidency.  Believe me, I was very upset about it and couldn’t understand how it all could have happened; however, when I was convinced that he was going to win both Florida and Ohio, I saw no other possible result.

If you look back at the previous blog you will see that I’ve also predicted a number of tragic results of Trump’s early presidency – among them a possible impeachment. I urge you to go back and view my predictions.

I recently read a remarkable essay about the tragedy of this election and I want to urge you all to read it as well. It is by Neal Gabler.

Gabler is a senior fellow at The Norman Lear Center at the University of Southern California. He is also the author of five books and has won book awards from both the LA Times and Time Magazine. His essay, “Farewell, America” was published on the Moyers & Company web site: http://billmoyers.com/story/farewell-america/

Here are some significant quotes from Farewell, America!

“Whatever place we now live in is not the same place it was on Nov. 7. No matter how the rest of the world looked at us on Nov. 7, they will now look at us differently. We are likely to be a pariah country.… If there is a single sentence that characterizes the election, it is this: “He says the things I’m thinking.” That may be what is so terrifying. Who knew that so many tens of millions of white Americans were thinking unconscionable things about their fellow Americans? Who knew that tens of millions of white men felt so emasculated by women and challenged by minorities? Who knew that after years of seeming progress on race and gender, tens of millions of white Americans lived in seething resentment, waiting for a demagogue to arrive who would legitimize their worst selves and channel them into political power? Perhaps we had been living in a fool’s paradise. Now we aren’t....”

“This generally has been called the “hate election” because everyone professed to hate both candidates. It turned out to be the hate election because, and let’s not mince words, of the hatefulness of the electorate. In the years to come, we will brace for the violence, the anger, the racism, the misogyny, the xenophobia, the nativism, the white sense of grievance that will undoubtedly be unleashed now that we have destroyed the values that have bound us....”

“Democracy can’t cope with extremism. Only violence and time can defeat it. The first is unacceptable, the second takes too long. Though Trump is an extremist, I have a feeling that he will be a very popular president and one likely to be re-elected by a substantial margin, no matter what he does or fails to do. That’s because ever since the days of Ronald Reagan, rhetoric has obviated action, speechifying has superseded governing....”

“But the disempowered media may have one more role to fill: They must bear witness. Many years from now, future generations will need to know what happened to us and how it happened. They will need to know how disgruntled white Americans, full of self-righteous indignation, found a way to take back a country they felt they were entitled to and which they believed had been lost. They will need to know about the ugliness and evil that destroyed us as a nation after great men like Lincoln and Roosevelt guided us through previous crises and kept our values intact. They will need to know, and they will need a vigorous, engaged, moral media to tell them. They will also need us.

We are not living for ourselves anymore in this country. Now we are living for history.”

That’s tough stuff to read. I pray that Gabler is incorrect. I pray that I’m incorrect in my predictions. I am pessimistic, however.

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