Thursday, May 31, 2007

Morning in America

When was the last time you really felt good about being an American? I don't mean just because your favorite candidate won or just because you found some money in your sofa. I mean real joy. The kind that sticks with you even when bad things happen.

Reagan had a TV commercial that started out "It's morning in America". Americans (in general) like the Teflon President and felt good about America. Even when things got bad, I felt good. I felt like things were going to get better.

What was odd, was Reagan had another commercial about "a bear in the woods" that encouraged anti-Soviet fears. Even with this stirred up fear, somehow you knew things were going to get better (they did, the Soviet Union outspent itself and dissolved - when was the last time you feared an ICBM ontop of your head).

In looking at the current crop of presidential wannabees, I don't see anything to be hopeful about. Instead, all I see is candidates who want to stir up problems. I wish they would give me some hope. After all that we've been through in the last couple of decades, we need hope. It's morning in America, but is a new day dawning or just another day like yesterday?

1 comment:

zabel said...

They may not all be deliberate, but there are more than plenty of forces working out there to make sure we don't feel good about being Americans. I do my best to mentally give them all the finger.

We really should feel good about being Americans and about being in America. We live in one of the freest nations in the world; our destiny is completely within our control. The poor fellow living in Syria or Somalia or Myanmar or any such place cannot say the same.