“When you’re weary, feeling small,
When tears are in your eyes, I’ll dry them all.
I’m on your side, oh, when times get rough,
And friends just can’t be found,
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay me down.”
— Bridge Over Troubled Water by Paul Simon
by Lynn Mandaville
Weary. Just plain weary.
It’s amazing that anyone can even get out of bed in the morning any more.
Washington is awash in self-centered, egotistical men and women who have completely forgotten for whom they work.
Morals and ethics are antiquated philosophies.
When this generation’s children talk to their grandchildren, they will no longer say, tongue in cheek, “when I was your age, I walked to school barefoot in three feet of snow, uphill both ways.” They will say, in cynical seriousness, “when I was a kid, I hid in a bathroom with twenty other children and the teacher, seeing who could stay silent the longest, while we listened for gunfire and SWAT sirens outside.”
The NRA isn’t content that there are more small arms weapons in America than there are people (Small Arms Survey of 2017, including expert estimations of licit and illicit guns).
As of this week it is estimated that 228,000 school age children have been directly exposed to gun violence in school since the Columbine tragedy in 1999. (Nearly a quarter of a million children in twenty years.)
And as of this week there are two more dead teenagers, killed by the hand of another teenager in school.
I could go on citing statistics.
But I’m weary. Just plain weary.
Of elected officials who are now “politicians” rather than public servants.
Of men and women of the cloth (certainly not all, but enough) who are now grifters, influencers, bigots and zealots from whom their respective religions would distance themselves.
Of lawyers who are manipulators of truth, definition and the rule of law.
Of ordinary people who believe that they are experts in areas in which they have no experience or training.
Of the too many of us who have lost the ability to filter or restrain ourselves from our basic reactions to situations. Who have lost our impulse control.
And of those who, having been confronted with these truths, do nothing to change.
I am particularly distressed this week, not as much that there has been yet another school shooting, as that instead of public outrage, the media is covering the young heroes who died stopping the shooter, while we, the public, are buying into this passive acceptance that the death of children to gun violence is inevitable, and that we can rely on other children to deter the monsters (also children) who seek to kill them, rather than relying on adults who are actually in a position to do something about it.
School shootings may be statistically more frequent, but they are not normal.
Children offering up their own bodies to save their own classmates may be laudable, but they are not normal.
School shootings and the resultant deaths, heroic or not, are not, by any stretch of the imagination, normal.
They are abominations of what society has striven to achieve in modern times.
Lately, we have heard Democratic presidential hopefuls enumerate the many ills we experience daily in our country. Often, while bemoaning these situations, we hear them claim, “This is not America!”
People becoming impoverished by catastrophic health care costs – this is not America.
School districts that cannot afford supplies and textbooks in substandard buildings – this is not America.
Unfair tax codes that favor the uber-wealthy – this is not America.
Elected officials who flaunt the Constitution – this is not America.
Mass shootings in American schools – this is not America.
But guess what??
This IS America!
And it is America because we have let it become what it is.
On one level I can understand why some citizens prefer to ignore what is going on around them. It’s hard enough to get up each day, get the kids to school and get to the job that doesn’t pay you a living wage, provides no benefits, and maybe has a shitty boss. It’s hard enough to come home to a house that needs cleaning, meals that need to be prepared, bills that need to be shuffled and prioritized before some of them actually get paid. It’s hard to face a car that needs repair, a mortgage that is due, a family member who is ill. Day-to-day life is tough enough without wondering which politician is taking campaign money to ignore what’s good for the people, or which nation is enriching uranium for a bomb with which to threaten their neighbors.
A lot of days, simply coping with the mundane is really tough. I have experienced enough of that myself.
When I was a young parent, Pop had a poster in one of his spare bedrooms. The caption to the sketch of a creepy little man cringing inside a box said, “People are no damn good.”
I hated that poster. At that time I didn’t subscribe to that philosophy. I honestly believed that human beings were innately good.
But time has corrupted my view. I have seen what mankind is capable of. To one degree or another, each of us is guilty of one or more of the seven deadly sins. (Some might call this the condition of original sin.) And even when faced with the truths of our transgressions we do little or nothing to correct our behavior.
Even when faced with those transgressions in our leaders, we don’t bat an eyelash.
Instead, we opt to lower our standards in deference to the ends produced by the corrupted means.
We have become mere shadows of what any Creator intended for us to be.
I can’t speak for you, but I can share what were formative influences for me.
At a very early age I was influenced by things I learned in My Weekly Reader, an elementary school publication intended to deliver age-appropriate news to children about scientific discoveries, world events, government, the arts and humanities. This children’s newspaper didn’t propagandize or proselytize. It informed. And in doing so, it encouraged youngsters to think critically about values, motives, and the ends those things produced.
Through its use in a secular setting, the public school, we explored human similarities and differences. We talked about ethics without religious overtones. This was not dissimilar from what I learned in Brownies or Girl Scouts.
Emphasis was always on being the very best person you were capable of. It was always on raising the bar, not lowering it.
In earlier years of Saturday Night Live there was a recurring segment called “Lowered Expectations.” It satirized the idea that in anything, by lowering our standards, we would never be disappointed.
It seems that now, instead of laughing at that concept, we embrace it.
Instead of inspiring us to outrage, the media is steering us toward a new means of coping. The outrage that was so loud and effective coming from the Parkland survivors – and was equally loudly expounded by the press – has now morphed into a weary acceptance of such repetitive events, in which we attempt to find inspiration through the self-sacrifice of teens who prove themselves to be better persons than what we spineless adults ought to be.
To expand on the analogy I choose in Paul Simon’s lyrics, we are the adults who should be providing that moral bridge over troubled water. We have the benefit of experience, education, and intestinal fortitude to build the support structure that carries our youngsters over the tempest.
I guess the important question here is why are we depending on the children to provide the infrastructure?
i agree that for many in America who are paying attention to the trends in the changing social order, and who are not simply reprising the character Pollyanna, there is an overall weariness, frustration and discouragement that is growing. It would be easy to blame this decades-long deterioration totally on one’s detested politicians. Though a significant responsibility always rests with leadership in every realm to be sure, in America is the citizenry that puts all worthy and unworthy elected officials there. Ultimately we have to look at the attitudes of ourselves and the choices of the citizenry to see the roots of all deterioration.
You speak of former times in school. I went to Wayland K-12. I remember in early grades thanking God for our food before we ate. God as our creator and loving Father was not some abstract optional or unnecessary concept. I was never taught in any class growing up that we are all just the random result of some lucky primordial soup success with no intrinsic purpose or destiny. How does self-worth and love for others come from some amazing accident of the universe? It doesn’t. But consistent with that “you’re nothing but a cosmic accident” view of human life which has been taught as scientific fact to children since the sixties is the view that life only means what you choose it to mean, which leads directly into growing selfishness and the death of true love and care for others. So to substitute for actual intrinsic worth and to attempt to impose some value children are told how great they are no matter how they behave and are handed a trophy for just being there. It results in despair and a cheapening of life which shows up everywhere.
No nation can survive and thrive for very long, and cannot possibly have God’s blessing, which is willing to teach children and adults that we are all sourced in a random cosmic accident, not designed and loved by or accountable to anyone above other human beings, and that it’s perfectly OK to choose since 1963 of record to prohibit over 60 million innocent lives from even reaching the daylight because those innocents simply do not fit with someone’s lifestyle.
Children emulate what they are taught and what they see and hear around them. They either grow up to be loving, caring, protective and responsible young people and adults on one end of the spectrum, or they grow to be self-centered, me-first, hopeless, harsh, callous, greedy and even brutal human beings on the other end. This is not some mystery. The fruit comes from the root.
Every generation is a reflection of the values and training of the generations still alive before it.
Thank you, Lynn, for a thoughtful and thought provoking piece.
Terry Parks seems to think we are a homogenous society with shared beliefs, and forgets that the government shall not establish religion. There are religious schools, if that’s wanted, Public schools are just that: public. There are, or may be in public schools, Jews and Hindus and Muslims and Atheists and Humanists and Zoratrians and Pagans and others. I spent a time in the public schools after I became a new college graduate. Would you want me, or someone like me, leading the group of children in some sort of prayer that I thought was reflective of my beliefs? You’d howl, trust me on that.
Responding to the comments of Basura, I will answer at considerable length. Sorry. Too few words. trite phrases and soundbites don’t do this very serious subject any justice. No one has to read this or pay any attention to what I write here. It is only for those who are objective thinkers.
I do fully understand and appreciate that we as U.S. citizens are not, nor have we ever been, a society embracing fully unified and universal beliefs. However, in cohesive and healthy nations, just as with any group of human beings including families, there are some recognizable and predominant common societal beliefs that are unashamedly and openly represented and verbalized without being required of anyone individually.
One could rightly refer to this pervasive and overall general societal belief basis as “the soul of the nation”. If a nation loses its founding and cohesive “soul”, history shows that it is not going to be very long in historical terms before it loses its way, becomes increasingly corrupt and disunified, and it ultimately forfeits its respected place in the world, if not its very existence.
This nation was not in any way founded on a societal belief that there is no God, nor that the existence of God doesn’t matter or that God is to be shunned or ignored in official and public settings. The opposite is true. That is why the indispensible and foundational Declaration of Independence clearly and boldly states that our rights are derived from our “Creator”, and the framers of that great document employ the terms “Nature’s God”, the “Supreme Judge of the world” and “Divine Providence”.
That founding declaration has never been repudiated nor in any way officially questioned as to its truth, contents and intents. We officially display “In God We Trust” on our money. The Ten Commandments appear on the wall over our Supreme Court. Congress opens sessions with prayer and we inaugurate our Presidents before the whole world with prayers to God. All presidents end their speeches with some phrase that includes “may God bless America”. Even liberal democrat Nancy Pelosi openly states at times at official appearances that “we are all children of God”. Never in the history of our country prior to 1963 were public schools ever prohibited from having open prayers in schools. I was there when it became illegal. I experienced it and watched the changes begin to occur in following years toward greater loss of the soul of this nation and personal morality. Crime began to increase. Within 10 years the federal government via the Supreme Court protected the taking of the lives of millions of innocent unborns.
It is absolutely true that Congress cannot “establish” a religion (declare or require set religious affiliation and observation by the citizenry). But neither can Congress prohibit free exercise of faith anywhere throughout the land. Our national founders and leaders who presided over the adoption of our Constitution did not believe they were in any way “establishing” any official religion by publicly acknowledging God, speaking of Him and praying to Him. At the same time they did not deny citizens of the free exercise of their own held faiths, even if they disagreed. And some did.
It is only in our lifetime, since 1963, that speaking about and to God and acknowledging our Creator has become prohibited and even illegal in certain taxpayer-funded places and institutions. This has taught children and others that there is no general national acknowledgement of God within our society, and no display of our gratitude to and reliance upon God for His guidance and blessing of us all and our nation “under God”. That was a fateful change.
A society cannot do that and still hope to maintain its soul and its moral conscience. The society will continue to fracture and deteriorate as it holds less and less to its core. More and more young people and adults will be like boats that have no harbor and are adrift at sea. Our founders knew this and thought about the loss of what they were giving birth to, and were sobered.
I am respresenting a foundational and soundly historical position, not some new or radical religious concept. We gave up on what this nation was, have ignored God, and wonder why things turn to rot.
Mr. Parks,
God bless you for saying your piece so eloquently and with historical background.
People that believe in nothing cannot abide by others who do.
Is this why Ranger Rick signs off with “”the rotting of America from within continues”?