But when you read the contemporaneous accounts, the letters and news stories written as American boys were being chewed up at Shiloh, as American families were being evicted from their homes, as American ships and sailors were burning at Pearl Harbor, there is no “of course.” In the desperate and uncertain time before news becomes history, there is only the sobering realization of how much there is to lose — and how easily it could all be lost.
We are living in such a time right now.
It is a moment long in coming, a reckoning long deferred, a showdown between the better angels of our nature and the worst, and we have marched toward it blithely, numbly, concession by concession, deferral by deferral, for decades.
We saw test scores fall, our children growing dumber by the school year. We saw income inequality rise, a 40-hour workweek insufficient to guarantee a roof over one’s head. We saw Americans retreat to information silos, until alternate realities became less a comic book trope than a fact of daily life. We saw tribal hatreds that once shamed decent people given prime-time slots on cable news. We saw critical thinking eroded, statesmanship debased, civil debate denigrated, bizarre conspiracies elevated. We saw America become the Stupid Giant of planet Earth.
And we did little to stop it.
Instead, we routinely assured ourselves that we were — to misquote Sean Hannity only slightly — the bestest, greatest, most gosh darn wonderful country God ever created on the face of planet Earth. Even as our greatness rusted and our wonderfulness began to tarnish.
