Truthfully, we have been missing those brakes for quite some time already. The situation began with the weird campaign for president, with lies becoming the currency of the day, and the pressure on those brakes increased, against an ever increasing opposing pressure. They began to squeak and squeal. They began to be to loosen, unable to fully bring a speeding country to a halt. They finally failed when reality was dismissed and broken and twisted fairy tale endings of personal wishes took over the roads of America.
On such broken and challenged roadways, driving with damaged cars and seriously damaged drivers. America simply gave up the ghost, or as near as ever before. Certainly it appeared that the drivers now on the road were playing deadly games of Chicken with broken brakes and knew not how to stop the car nor did they appear to even wish to do so.
The damage did not stop there, The increasing acidic rhetoric of the drivers dripped down, ate at the floors of the cars they were driving, dripped through to the streets below, creating new cracks and stressing older ones. Cracks began to appear where they had never been before. As for the engineers who were supposed to fix the mess, why they stood there doing nothing or even advising how to exacerbate the situation. And that, my friends, is how the roads of America, the ground upon which they were laid, the very foundation of it all, suffered the attack of the broken brakes and broken drivers, and crashed, time and time again, into the walls, the lightpoles, the very people alongside these same roads.
These cracks and broken brakes influenced us to forget our manners, to forget indoor behavior and rules of societal living. We dismissed those calling for indoor voices. We discounted those calling for an end to schoolyard politics, but were shut out. Too much fun bullying, especially when one feels a victory. A Pyric victory, but one nevertheless. And America broke.
The question now before us is whether America can be fixed. But how to do that when the voices are still raised, when the 'dukes' are also raised, even flying through the air, making contact with chins and jaws. You ask where are the referees, where are their calls of foul play, of penalties? Forget about it, for they have long ago either left the arenas or joined in the fray. America is broken.
When there are a myriad number of crises that must be resolved, international, national, and local, a news site lists a thong item of clothing as a trending item. Really? This is what interests American citizens caught in a confusing, swirling eddy of hatred, politics, broken dreams, and anger, such deep, corrosive anger?
I think we are better than that. I think we have relied too long on those broken brakes. The time has come to fix them, to rip them out, replace them with newer, stronger ones. Brakes that know how to function. Brakes meant to absorb shocks and continue to function. Brakes that respond to words of hope and reconciliation rather than words of anger, of hate, of bias and party politics. These are brakes that will remember through generational genetics that America is better than that. That America knows how to fix its broken cars, retrain its broken and confused drivers, and repair the huge potholes on its roadways.
We need to remember that we can fix all these issues if we but try. If we but remember that the wrong way to fix one hatred is to induce or stress another. Do not speak of prejudice but allow and even encourage that of anti-Semitism, deeming it socially acceptable. Do not call out "recounting racism she has faced during the COVID-19 pandemic, offered shout-outs to her friends who also have faced discrimination, including African-Americans, Native Americans, Hispanics and her “Middle Eastern peers, who have been facing struggle after struggle and are in constant fear of their families and friends being struck down by a militant government, who have had their land stolen and abused. I applaud you" - Wrong, so wrong.
Do not equate absolutely uneven topics, for it demeans the meaning and importance of the larger issue. Do not allow, even seek out, speakers at graduation ceremonies who pick up on the prejudice flavor of eternity, and rally the crowd against Jews. Those brakes of society forever seem to be broken, and if managing to get better, are kicked again into broken status.
America, to your cars. To your drive pits and fix whatever needs to be fixed. Remember who we are. Remember our promise and our debt to history. Remember that hatred spreads and is oh so difficult to dredge out of the land into which it sinks, particularly when there are those pushing for it.
America, heal thyself and thus the world.
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