The end of discord

Lately, I’ve given a lot of thought to what future history books might say about us, we the people of America, flag-waving leaders of the free world who shaped and nurtured the first quarter of the 21st century. Will we look like heroes who saved democracy, or villains who buried our heads in the sand, hastening its demise?

Today, my wish is for all of us to be remembered as heroes.

There’s no substitute for democracy and the freedoms it offers. Sustaining it throughout our nation’s history is what has made us an envied nation, a great nation. But our discord is making us weak.

If we as ordinary citizens can’t resolve our discord, historians will look back and lay blame on us more than on any group of legislators because we the people, being the majority, still rule.

In blaming us, I fear they will excoriate our entrenched wealth gap as immoral, and castigate us for standing idly by, doing absolutely nothing to stop it. They will label us heartless, if not sinful, as they point to its helpless offspring—ballooning homelessness spreading everywhere across our homeland.

It’s likely they will question our sanity for pretending the kids will be alright, denying ourselves the urgency to protect them by averting, at all costs, looming climate disasters. Ultimately, they might boil us down to wastrels, analyzing how our addiction to frills and thrills took priority over our social responsibilities toward each other.

My wish is to stop that future now before such books are written. That means we’d have to believe that the future is still ours to change. It means we’d have to stop participating in the ongoing hissing and dissing that divides and gets us nowhere.

Discord is only profitable to those who sell it, plain and simple. So we can do ourselves and our country a favor by not buying into it. I believe we’re a scrappy society that’s smart enough to know when we’re being had and wise enough to know who’s zooming who. We don’t need to hate each other. We need to heal each other. That’s the bottom line. Isn’t it time we try?

My wish is for historians to talk about how we tried and succeeded. My wish is for them to tell the story of our collective effort: how we put aside differences to hold onto those precious things we enjoyed in common, mainly our freedoms; how we continued to go to the polls to vote for our favorites, but also vote for our common good; how we came together to promote each other’s welfare, because we depend on each other and have so much to offer each other, and because it’s the right thing to do. Because it’s what genuine democracy is all about.

I believe my wish is not just possible, it’s essential. Please join my tribe to collaborate on this wish and help me fulfill it. You can also repost this wish, or take any additional positive action that is within your power.

Thank you!