I find myself sitting in a hotel room in Dallas this 4th of July, wondering whether it’s worth another stab at an uplifting post about the promise of liberty and freedom. Two years ago, I felt that it was. Last year, not so much. Being in Dallas, a misbegotten pseudo-city in the Sovereign Republic of Texas, doesn’t help.
My less than optimistic perspective last year was largely due to the state of the economy and the state of the American psyche. We faced hard economic times and, in a peaceful regime change, replaced one set of folks who produced a lot of problems for this country with another set of folks who haven’t figured out how to fix the problems of their predecessors. My assumption last year was that an America concerned with keeping a job wasn’t an America concerned with higher order problems. Abe Maslow had it nailed down.
But what’s really bothering me this year, this 4th of July, is that we’re still us. Dan Hull at What About Clients? has pointed out too many times to count that we’re still a young country. He’s right, but how long can we use that excuse? There has to come a time when we grow up, open our eyes and stop substituting the fantasy of platitudes for the reality that surrounds us. We’ve now had 233 years to get it right.
The word last year was “change”. It served President Obama well, as it galvanized the dissatisfaction that permeated America. But it’s a negative concept, that we don’t like where we are. It tells us nothing of where we should be going. As it turns out, “change” in the current lexicon doesn’t mean a whole lot, as we seem to be doing much of the same as we were doing before. Frankly, I never thought otherwise.
I’ve just lived through too many elections to believe that shifts in regime mean shifts in America. I watch in faint amusement as Judge Sonia Sotomayor is castigated by Republicans as a liberal, when she would have made a fine selection had her name been put in the hopper by President George W. Bush. It’s not a positive sign. We’re fighting to keep our head above water, as if that’s the best we can hope to do. It’s not enough, really.
As another Fourth goes by, and my mind turns to barbecued ribs, I find myself thinking about the young lawyers who comment here, who have so many more answers than I do to the pressing concerns of the day. I remember when I had the clarity of my convictions, before I came to the realization that very few things pan out in reality quite the way they’re supposed to or we think they should. But youth brings the optimism of future potential. Experience brings the cynicism of past disappointment. Last year was a disappointing one in many ways.
It’s not that I want to be disappointed in how little forward progress we achieved, but that I don’t feel like I have enough time left on earth to hide my head in the sand and pretend that everything is going to work out. Too often, it doesn’t work out. At least not well.
But there is a bright side to all this. Many of us, myself included, will keep on plugging away, despite our less than optimistic perspective and our heightened skepticism that today’s choices will prove any better than yesterday’s. I will do this because I refuse to give up. Not on people. Not on the United States of America. Not on the Fourth of July.
So as I sit here trying to muster something patriotic, perhaps even stirring, to say, the best I can come up with at the moment is that I wish I was out of Dallas and back in America. And if we all do heavier lifting, starting today, perhaps next year we can look back with pride at our accomplishments and look forward with hope that we are moving forward in achieving our promise.
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Thank you for writing this post. I think that things will improve this year. I trust this President.
You say that you wish you were “out of Dallas and back in America” — a comment which betrays your optimism.
I see things slightly differently — Dallas is, unfortunately, quite representative of America, or at least representative of at least one half of America. The great ideals of our founding fathers have largely been forgotten in Dallas, D.C. and Upstate New York.
We’ve had 233 years to get it right, but it seems that at worst, as a nation, we’re deliberately moving in the wrong direction. At best, we’re wandering in the desert. I don’t think that our collective demise will come in my lifetime, but I’d hazard a guess that unless things change dramatically, we don’t have 233 years left.
The United States is simply too large, and its citizens too fractious, desperate, indebted, distracted and ignorant. And unlike our banks and manufacturers, we are not too big to fail. Eventually, I expect that we will. I just hope that I’m not around to see it happen.
I don’t.
I’m a closet idealist, but please keep it to yourself.
I very much like and agree with your description of Dallas. Indeed it is not really America. The problem with Texas is that it has a population of over 20 million, who are supposed to be endowed with the ‘rights’ of Americans. Every day I wake up and ask myself, where on earth is the Justice Department?
Hope you found some wonderful barbecue ribs, which enhanced that feeling of optimism, even in the legal wasteland of Texas.
I’m a huge fan of barbecue. I would just rather have it in Houston or Austin than Dallas.
Just to clarify, old friend, I didn’t use America as being young–which it
is–as an “excuse” for anything. Your two sentences (thanks) above re: my
blog imply that I do.
It could be read that way by hundreds of enemies who want me to shut up and
Just Be Happy Going Through Life As A Turd, Like Everyone Else. Anyway, in
the our short but excellent post last year, I used 232 years as a
springboard to ask why we can’t square principles with reality in the U.S.
(Because we don’t.) Our 2008 post amply reflects that. Thanks for the link, though.
NOTE: Admittedly, I am getting a bit sensitive (i.e., pissed off) about any
arguably inaccurate statement–even yours–on the Net about “things that
matter”. The Net needs vigilance about that–and you are one of my heroes
and shining lights. The Internet–no, not Simple Justice–is a now shoddy
place to have a conversation these days. “Big Mouths, No Names” (your
phrase) and lots of bad pseudo-journalists with no rules, no guts, no real gospel, no soul. I would start drinking heavily if you ever bought into anything less than superb standards for 2 seconds. You haven’t–so my entire family thanks you….:)
You are, of course, absolutely right that your reference to America being young wasn’t offered as an excuse, and my adoption (for my admittedly own self-serving) was to use your point to make my own. Apologies for my taking of advantage of you.
And I both know, and agree, about your concerns with the devolvement of the blawgosphere, as far too many are using this as a vehicle for self-promotion, self-deception and plain old all-American deception. All of this has turned lawyers into a bunch of wussies, scared to death to say “no” to nonsense lest they offend someone, which would never do well for business. What a waste.
Blawg Review #219
This past week we celebrated an important anniversary. That’s right: July 5 was Huey Lewis’s birthday. Though other 80s rock stars have been in the headlines of late, I’ve been [s]plotting[/s] planning this Huey Lewis and the News-themed Blawg Review…