The Business of America is Change
The Business of America is Change
Change is a constant in American history and life.
The promise of the future always undergirded trips to local historical sites. Lexington Market, before some renovations, carries a glow of what this old mid-Atlantic city was like before deindustrialization, crime sprees, and income devastation changed the Charm City landscape. The Washington Monument suggests a sense of majesty as one of America’s oldest cities hums along into a century of uncertainty. The Inner Harbor fills with tourists as the promises of urban renewal fill an air visited by curious transplants, international visitors, and tenacious merchants. The site of the old Memorial Stadium reminds residents of legacies left behind by sports heroes of the past. A city that once prided itself as one of the most populous in America now shrinks at the sight of newly developed metropolises that supersede the once great city as spaces of modern hustle and bustle.
How fast can a nation transform without disrupting something that was treasured before? Is it possible to flip the switch on one economic model in hopes that society will welcome an automated, online, and computer generated one? Is it asking too many people to become part of this new landscape when they were not adequately prepared for it due to an eternal (and generational) understanding of manual labor, industrial value, and workplace mastery?
These are the questions that mire the American conscience as observers scramble to understand the rise of populism and anger in our society’s political diet. Can everything be attached to ethnicity and identity? Or is that even a smokescreen that evades an even deeper sense of displacement? An illusion that occupies the hopes, dreams, and fears of a society in transition.
Change is a constant in American history and life. Generations of women and men of all backgrounds have moved to interpret the American Constitution in a manner that includes their fellow Americans. This remains the case for people of all ethnicities and races who came together to support the end of de jure segregation. This is not to say that the backlash hasn’t been powerful, especially today as de facto segregation remains an issue that is experienced in wealth, health, and educational gaps which perpetuate the ghosts of a racially divided past and caste system. However the miraculous expansion of rights and pride to an underclass of Americans is a collective achievement as a society reorchestrated its understanding of race and identity.
Likewise, generations of women have won and lost constitutional struggles to enshrine equal rights. Today, women are engaged in a titanic struggle to secure autonomy over their choices and their health care. More enlightened understandings of gender and sex have shed light on the perils of toxic frames that create horrors which cast people into a binary that undermines their personal sense of worth. It is okay to love who you love and we should lift up queer and straight families that express a dedication to their youth and environment. To make a child feel bad about their parents and to muzzle them in educational environments is antithetical to the goals of our democratic purpose as we strive to advance humanity through our acceptance and tolerance.
A nation that was conceived within the elitist visions of a landed gentry has progressed to be a nation of modest hard workers who toil from humble beginnings. Our changing views on the value of labor (and the levels to which we tolerate exploitation) remain a constant in the American digest. The nation not only strives for political democracy but also economic democracy. Everyone should have an opportunity to succeed and attain wealth, but people should also have the basic necessities of modern living in a hyper-developed society. This includes access to adequate health care, access to clean water, access to substantive education, and access to safe streets. Without these lifelines, our public squares declines and so does democracy.
How fast can things change? Why is change so complicated?
Our nation’s consistent propensity for change is part of who we are.
Human history is littered with failed societies that couldn’t craft the right formula. Whether it be swift change that destabilized a nation’s foundation or whether it be too little change that undermined people’s faith in that nation, the ability of a society to transform in a stabilizing manner has been the conundrum of statecraft for ages.
But, I believe in America.
How many examples are there in world history where the powers that have run a society for generations realize that their ways have become inefficient and are out of date, so they invite the next generation to take control? Power brings money, money buys more power. But when the power becomes concentrated into a small group of wildly wealthy, people become restless. Then change needs to come from resistance and pressure. Often, the resistance is met with repression. If the oppression is met with violence, then change will come, but the new boss will look like the old boss. If change comes through non-violence and truth, then a new world can be born. We are facing those choices now. Persist.