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America never stopped being great. Its greatness may be eroding, but a lot of people still want to live here, and not just Americans. In Minnesota, people want to vote. More on that later. But it’s hard to find good, even great things, that don’t look worse under scrutiny.
Sports, for example, provide a reason to survive another workweek, stay up late on school nights, and, if all goes well, secure water-cooler bragging rights. Sports also have given us deflated footballs, corked bats, and lying about performance-enhancing drugs. There’s a thin line between the thrill of victory and the agony of deceit, but our morale depends too heavily on sports to forsake it.
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Consider music. I’ll forever celebrate the Beach Boys for their upbeat summer anthems, Fleetwood Mac’s evolution from a seminal blues group to one of history’s best-selling pop bands, Creedence Clearwater Revival’s groundbreaking swamp rock, and Motown’s relentless rhythm-and-blues.
A deeper look belies their joyful sounds, however. Fleetwood Mac’s and the Beach Boys’ personal lives were disasters. Creedence members still don’t speak to each other. Spats between Motown talent and ownership are legendary. Two members of Badfinger hanged themselves, but their resilient hit, “Baby Blue,” endured long enough to close TV’s “Breaking Bad” series in 2013. A new generation was introduced to Badfinger’s timeless music.
With resilience, America can endure, too, and introduce succeeding generations to a future worth waiting for. Music and sports are microcosms of today’s United States. They are mini-Americas. Add business, politics, manufacturing, education, and service-industry sectors, too.
America’s surface problems may be sinking deeper and more quickly into our communal fabric than before, but bad news has always traveled fast. With today’s 24-hour news cycle, largely unchecked blogging capacity, and the runaway success of conspiracy theories, legitimate communication struggles.
I briefly mentioned politics, but this discussion wouldn’t be complete without a nod — maybe “swift kick” is the better term — to government. Honestly, American government has gotten some important things right since 1776. We might have been slow entering World War II, but courage and sacrifice eventually won the day. America now has the most powerful military on earth.
Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraqi conflicts were dark moments for the United States. Current tensions with Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran are about to reveal what, if anything, we’ve learned from history.
Foreign entanglements remain a sticking point for both major American political parties, but how many non-American conflicts have ended “with malice toward none?” The Falkland Islands War between the United Kingdom and Argentina? What about Iran vs. Iraq? The Bosnian, Kosovo, and Yom Kippur wars? How did they turn out?
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In war, they say, “To the victor goes the spoils.” In addition to being magnanimous in victory, The United States Marshall Plan made things rather helpful to the spoilees, including Germany. That was, as the British might say, “jolly well sporting of the U.S.” If Germany had won World War II, would there have been a German Marshall-type plan to rebuild America?
“History,” Winston Churchill reputedly said, “is written by the victors.” That may be, but even revisionists and conspiracists can’t deny that the Marshall Plan worked out well for everyone.
What else can America do to endure? Following Minnesota’s voting discipline is a start. Minnesota Public Radio reported that Minnesota’s young voters have the potential to impact election outcomes for years.
Maxwell Frost, D-Florida, the first Gen Z member of Congress and a gun-violence survivor, is making inroads to gun safety and other issues affecting all generations. He and some others are doing the legwork. The least the rest of us can do is vote.
Jim Newton of Itasca, Illinois, is a freelance writer, retired after a career in subrogation, customer service, broadcast sales and production. He wrote this exclusively for the News Tribune.
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