Ward: America, who are we?
William Butler Yeats warned in “The Second Coming” that “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”
Welcome to America — that’s where we are now.
The hardest thing I’ve had to confront is the idea that the America I believed in — land of the free, home of the brave, the shining city on a hill — could unravel so quickly. That with the right cynical leadership, even our strongest institutions could be bent, bullied, and broken. That our proudest ideals — liberty, equality, justice — could be discarded in favor of grievance, fear, and the pursuit of money and power.
We are watching it happen: The rule of law being undermined, the press and universities capitulating in advance, public servants threatened into silence, and overt hypocrisy flaunted in front of our courts and our citizens. We once held ourselves up as a model for the world. Now, we watch in horror as we become the very thing we used to oppose — a nation drifting toward authoritarianism, where might makes right, truth is what the loudest voice claims, and cruelty is a governing principle.
It didn’t take long — just a few years — to strip away the veneer of American idealism and reveal something more grotesque and cynical beneath. Are we truly different from the corrupt, violent, unstable nations we once pitied?
It is a bitter irony that when Trump maligned “s**thole countries,” he seemed less disgusted than envious — envious of dictators who could silence dissent, subvert justice, and enrich themselves with impunity. With Trump and his Insane Clown Posse, we are witnessing firsthand how a noble experiment devolves into exactly that kind of state.
Their cynical bet is that, when faced with a choice between our better angels and barbaric cruelty, we will choose the latter. So far, they seem to be winning. And I find myself looking into a national mirror and seeing a reflection I barely recognize.
With sorrow and disbelief, I offer the final line: “And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”
Kevin P. Ward
Snowmass
