The future looks like a crapshoot
You might say I’ve been a cockeyed optimist all these years. Or foolish and naive. I’ve never been with the people who proclaim that the country and the world are going to hell, that we’re doomed, that life will be miserable in the year … well, anytime in the future.
“I’m glad I’m not graduating now,” you’ve heard people – mostly old-timers like myself – say. “Things are tough, and they’re only going to get worse.”
I’d nod my head and say nothing. I thought that was crazy talk. Until now.
Color me pessimistic. I can’t recall a time that was so fraught with danger and uncertainty.
First off, there’s the nuclear threat. When President Kennedy likened the possibility of nuclear annihilation to the “sword of Damocles” hanging over each of our heads, I was just a kid and didn’t fully comprehend the dangers inherent in a world bristling with thermonuclear weapons.
I guess I thought no one would be foolish enough to use such weapons. Frankly, I hardly gave them a second thought. I never had mushroom cloud dreams, or nightmares.
Russia’s reckless invasion of Ukraine has triggered new doubts about just how smart and prudent and wise we are.
At the moment, not very, maybe.
I’ve seen and heard more than one TV pundit – a former general or admiral or a sitting member of Congress – launch some pretty loose talk about this weapon system and that weapon system and the need for the Biden administration to stand up – really stand up – to the Russians.
As for Vladimir Putin, he’s a complete idiot. Even before his ill-considered invasion, the Russian dictator would rattle the nuclear cage. Now, the rattle is more like a drumbeat.
It gives me the willies. Don’t these people have any idea of what their fooling around with? Has it been so long since the world came close to blowing itself up, that these folks have simply forgotten the utter destructive capability of bombs many times more powerful than the ones dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
Henry Kissinger said recently, “We are living in a totally new era,” apropos of a world without Cold War nuclear guard rails, a world in which the nuclear genie is the shared responsibility of the Saudis, the North Koreans, the Turks, the Iranians, and the Chinese.
The Chinese, the speculation runs, might very well employ an expanded nuclear arsenal in a showdown with Taiwan.
The nuclear clock is ticking. It’s not quite midnight, but it sure is dark.
The clock is also ticking on American democracy, and unlike the nuclear crisis, which is a crisis of the elites, the crisis of American democracy begins and ends with ordinary Americans.
If you believe Donald Trump won the 2020 election, you are the problem. If you know the former president lost but refuse to acknowledge that lose, then you are the problem.
I use the term “ordinary” Americans. That’s not entirely fair. A huge part of the blame can and should be cast on leaders. For instance, Republican members of the state General Assembly.
Thus, locally elected lawmakers Matthew Dowling, Ryan Warner, Ron Cook, and Patrick Stefano are deeply involved in undermining our long-cherished and long-held democratic traditions.
Until they and others like them come clean, we will continue down the thorny path to national ignominy.
As for higher-up Republicans, take Mehmet Oz’s latest gambit. The brain surgeon/TV host is running for the U.S. Senate seat now occupied by the retiring Pat Toomey.
Endorsed by Trump, Oz has lately taken a page from the anti-democracy Trump playbook by referring to himself as the “presumptive” nominee, even as votes continue to be counted in a razor-thin contest with rival David McCormick.
Blame the elites; blame the ordinary Joes and Janes of the party, who not only tolerate acts of defiance against democratic-norms, but egg such acts on.
This happens every time an “ordinary” voter buys into the crazy notion that the federal government is out to get him (or her), or, more pointedly, that the government in Washington is, by definition, tyrannical; that the best guarantee against the loss of God-given constitutional rights is a Glock or an AR-15 assault rifle with high magazine capacity; that the Democratic Party is a socialist encampment; that elections are stolen (by Democrats); that Americans are living under the thumb of repressive apparatchiks whose overriding goal is to mask and muzzle them.
Things are looking bad. Pessimists unite. On the other hand, losing streaks eventually come to an end. Or so I hope.
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown. He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail.com.