What Happened to America?

I was speaking with a friend that lives overseas last night. She is confused about the state of the U.S. What is happening? Another friend mentioned that Americans are now being viewed as a frightened people. I have heard similar questions and sentiments more than once lately. And, they are always spoken with sadness.


What has happened to America and Americans? What is happening?

We were once known as a people united and daring. We were once know as a people that moved forward, explored the unknown, took incredible risks. We were once innovating, inventive, curious. We overcame our fears and stepped boldly into the future. We reached for the stars.

What happened to that country and her people?

I am not under the false impression that America was ever perfect. Far from it. We had our fears and challenges. The difference is that we used to strive to overcome them. Now we allow them to pull us apart.

We fear those that are different and work to expel them from our society. We distrust and even despise those that do not fit into a narrowly defined niche. We go so far as to hate and ostracize an entire segment because of the actions of a few. Maybe it was always that way but it seems to be intensifying exponentially of late.

One could argue that many Americans have a long list of people to hate and distrust these days.

- anyone who isn’t white
- anyone who isn’t straight
- anyone who doesn’t have a job
- anyone who speaks with an accent
- anyone who is too poor to afford healthcare
- anyone who wants to save the planet for our children
- anyone who needs a helping hand
- anyone who doesn’t agree to a certain point of view

That is not a complete list, but it already means that a pretty significant number of people in this country are on the receiving end of some serious ill feeling. Instead of embracing the differences and working together to overcome all challenges, we are pushing each other away.

The Emma Lazarus poem that lies within the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty includes the lines:

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Should we remove that poem from the statue?  Is it really still valid?

Almost all of us, our parents, grandparents, or more distant ancestors, came here from somewhere else. We came here and built a nation that has led the world.

What happened to that brave country and people that embraced the world and the future? I fear it is no more. I fear it will never be again.

Nations rise and nations fall. It has been that way for the entire history of humanity. I just hoped that America’s time in the sun would last a little longer.