American dreamer

We are fast coming up on the anniversary of the worst attack by foreign powers on American soil - including Pearl Harbor.  And we are once again looking to get sucked back into the black hole known as the Middle East, an area that seems to reduce the U.S.A. to a state of unreasonably high expectations of military success based only on sheer bravado, because none of our previous excursions - or Great Britain's - turned out very well.

No one seems to care that we are being played, using a Checkers mind-set when the other side is steeped in chess.  We have no concept of the long game, unlike our adversaries.  

We bungled our surrogate victory in booting Russia from Afghanistan, giving rise to Osama bin Laden.  We bungled Iraq, pulling Iran, it's traditional enemy, into closer ties.  We bungled Syria, helping with the rise of ISIS.  It's not just that we have lousy foreign policies in the Middle East - it's that unless they are completely subjugating a people or using surrogates to do the same, we haven't a clue & invariably make a complete mess of it all.  (Can you spell Balfour Declaration?)

The faith of my birth instilled in me a deep belief that good things can come out of the worst possible situations.   After 9/11, there was an opportunity to step back & hit the "pause" button, to process the horror & our newly revealed vulnerability.  The world had wrapped us in their arms.  But it is against human nature - even more so, against our country's basic nature - to accept feelings of vulnerability.  So, we took the made the move that far more astute minds than ours had counted on & opted for revenge rather than reflection, on going after someone who felt like they were directly related to the attacks even if the facts indicated they weren't.  It felt right to attack Iraq, so a piddly number of people asked the tough questions, and they were silenced by a majority who went with their compromised hearts rather than their heads.

For the past week, I've been re-reading Deepening the American Dream, a remarkable collection of essays from a range of profound minds.  Oh, the joy of discovering that they are available online, so everyone who loves our country can experience them!  Or, they can get the book & turn down its pages & underline it & highlight it & right in the margins - like I have.  

It doesn't matter how you feel about where we are in race relations or whether the economy is rigged to benefit a few, doesn't matter if we are Republicans or Democrats or Radical Centrists, doesn't matter who we hope controls the Senate come January 2015 - what matters is that our beloved country is long overdue for a conversation about our American dream. We need to have the courage to really consider, long & hard, what we consider it to be, how it differs, what it is & what it means for ALL of us. 

It's easy to summon up the courage to attack, even if our experience tells us it will end badly.  At least if we DO something, if we strike out in revenge for the deaths of innocent people brutally slain in front of the whole world, it will feel better, even if it goes horribly wrong.  That's human nature. That's especially our nation's natural response - send in the cavalry!  But it's not what we need - we need to pause, we need to CIVILLY discuss, we need to consider what is the American dream.  Maybe, if we're lucky, we will be able to realize what it was & is & how to deepen it.  The alternative is dreadful beyond words.