It feels like for months now we have been waiting for the dust to settle in America. We've been waiting for some kind of return to normalcy but instead, it seems the dust is getting kicked up higher every day becoming a tornado raging around us, throwing every common fixture about until our nation starts to look at times unrecognizable.
In school, I often learned of eras like the '60s and '70s as these chaotic and turbulent periods of transition. The baby boomers helped fill the U.S. with colossal social, political and cultural change that warped everything and helped define those days as one of the craziest times to ever be alive in this country. I never really bought into all that, mainly because I think that a country like America is always looking ready to implode no matter what year. Each generation, while always on the verge of reinventing the country, is also given the task of rediscovering what made the country so special to begin with. Each generation has to recreate the messy, wonderful, chaotic, at times moronic, terrifying but all so inspiring United States all over again.
If ever there was a time we have returned to those "chaotic" baby boomer days, it is now. In fact, there are more millennials in the U.S. than baby boomers. The population that only a few years ago was being called the "do-nothing generation" has grown up into a mass of social movements, protests and activism for change that more recently than not has seemed to actually bring it about in waves that have forever changed the country.
But this moment of chaos can also be an incredibly scary period. With terrorism morphing into something completely new and more deadly each day, divisiveness in the country is growing like the plague. Foreign threats from Russia to North Korea are creeping right around the corner of the Armageddon vision of the U.S. that Trump revealed to the world during the Republican convention. The mayhem can start to feel closer to home than most of us would like to admit.
Even just the past few weeks have been roller coaster rides. In a time when political parties seem to exist for the sole purpose of vanquishing each other instead of expressing the voice of the people, people can get mixed feelings when watching the self-implosion occurring in both the major parties of our country.
The Democratic party is stuck in a modern day Watergate as evidence of tampering has been revealed to help Hillary Clinton beat Bernie Sanders. This resulted in the resigning of several major leaders including the DNC chair. It has led us to a strange moment in our history in which Democrats had to get mad at Russia for manipulating the election through revealing private emails that in turn showed Democrats manipulating the election.
Along with all this comes a feeling of disillusionment on the Republican side as Putin seems more interested in backing the Republican nominee than most Republicans since Trump repeatedly makes statements that align with the views of his party and the general public less and less. With so many people ready to vote for Snoopy or Mickey Mouse this fall, the future of the country can begin to feel bleak—like we are about to start sailing our ship without a mast.
No doubt, a new type of chaos is entering this country. This craziness shows no sign of ending any time soon but that doesn't mean we are doomed or anything so dramatic. America is as great of an experiment today as it was when the basic principles were first formed centuries ago. But what makes it such a unique experiment is the refusal to remain stagnant. It's trial and error until we get it right, while always keeping to the hypothesis that a country built for and by the people should always prevail. Right now this hypotheses is being tested hard, perhaps like never before.
But in order to pass this test, we must focus on the idea that change is about far more than a single election. It's about how we as Americans envision our future. There are always two ways to motivate any group of people into change. You can fill them with fear and hatred, much like the political parties have done now to create growing factions in our country, or you can choose the other route. The other route tells us that hope can be found when we are willing to work together for it. That offers solutions instead of fear-mongering, the belief that everything going wrong with America can be fixed with everything that is going right in America. It is the idea that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. In short, everything boils down to the simple idea: united we stand, divided we fall.
It is up to us, the American people, to make sure no matter who gets elected, that we continue to work toward change. In all the turmoil, it can be hard to remember that the true change in America is not simply from that one main act of voting that comes once every four years as we attempt to tear ourselves into red and blue, but instead from every small action we make as free people each and every day. It is how we exercise our freedom not the freedom itself that makes America great and in that respect, I do not believe we will fail.
