Turning Down the Heat

This is turning into a long hot summer for America. The East Coast just went through a record-breaking heat wave; La Nina is forecast for the Pacific which usually fries the Midwest; collars are hot all over the Gulf Coast, thanks to the man-made oil-gushing disaster; Main Street is still hot about Wall Street; Republicans are hoping the country will remain hot about bailouts through November; and the Democrats are hot about the blame they are getting for unemployment stagnation, even though the paternity of the Great Recession is easily attributable to the previous administration. Cleveland is hot that Lebron James did not turn down the Heat and remain in Cleveland; and hurricane season is heating up.
Summer is a time of betrayal and intrigue, usually limited to beach novels. Not this summer. Starting with Lebron’s betrayal of Cleveland (but not his dreams and friendships), tossing in the spy exchange just orchestrated by the Russians and the United States, adding the development of the “Spy Pigeon” Drone our military now has available, plus the report that Google Street View has been spying “inadvertently” on American citizens, (no wonder China has agreed to restore its license), Fox should be working on a new reality program called: “Can You Trust a Fifth Grader?”
“Under God” was added to the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954. The McCarthy witch hunt for communists had a lot to do with encouraging our country’s leaders to adopt the phrase. Clearly, we could not trust our neighbors to be fully American and not communist, so we came up with an ironclad theocratic phrase to confront the Iron Curtain. Today, given the economic uncertainty of the times, we have become suspicious of anyone and everyone, especially government. We expect government to solve our national problems, and yet we want it to be less intrusive in our lives. We want it to be effective, but when it is not, we want it smaller. Our trust in ourselves as a nation is so low, we want to get rid of or blame the latest wave of immigrants who always, over time, add to rather than subtract from the growth and goodness of our nation.
The spies we just rounded up accomplished nothing while they were here, except that they integrated themselves so successfully they had their neighbors and co-workers completely fooled, but not the FBI or CIA. Those are government institutions, by the way. Want to shrink those agencies now?
Just maybe it is time to renew our trust in our government, and our trust in ourselves to be generous, positive, hopeful, and adaptable. Maybe it is time to put all the anger, mistrust, and misunderstanding aside and renew our pledge of allegiance to the idea of America, not as it is but as it should be: inclusive, magnanimous, and moving in a positive direction. Yes, government should be more efficient and less costly, but I would rather have it strong enough to ferret out spies in our midst as well as put corporations and banks in their place when they start serving only their own short-term interests instead of the greater good. Rather than limit the institutions we can with our vote, we better think twice about what power they can wield on our behalf in the face of spies, BP, and Goldman Sachs. Making government less powerful will only play into the hands of those who would control it if they could and let loose a limitless concentration of power and wealth in the hands of the few, rather than spread among the people.
The heat is on, and it is time to cool our heads and warm our hearts, rather than letting the reverse rule the day.