April 20th - III

III 

Happy Easter. I have never been particularly religious. I was brought up feeling more Jewish than Christian, went to Catholic school, and realized the ugly truth that antisemitism is still alive and well. Regardless of what you believe or how you worship, my thought has always been that if religion to any degree can improve the quality of the human character, then it is absolutely a positive. What gets tricky is overly devout religious people, observing any faith, who use that faith to justify their morally bankrupt actions. 

Faith and Religion aside, it has been an interesting week in the United States of America. The political landscape of America has not been the same since 2016, the year our current president stormed on to the political scene. It is almost as if politics used to be this inaccessible vehicle that only the most highly educated career politicians could have access to. This was conveyed not only by those that occupied such political positions, but the way in which they behaved, and the rhetoric they used. What Donald Trump did, is insert a dumbed down level of rhetoric that spoke to the uneducated masses of American people. Trump spoke to his fellow politicians as a spoiled teenager, insulted he did not get his way. In doing that, the average American saw and heard this and said, “this is something I understand, has some parallel to the way I hear every day people speak, and something that feels more comfortable than the everyday Harvard educated politician speaking about foreign policy issues that I cannot even feign interest in.”

You might be saying that is a cynical way of looking at the American people as a whole, but the truth is, we have been asleep at the wheel. We have placed faith in the structures of our democracy to dispose of or hold off any existential threat to it. Ordinarily, I would agree, the system of checks and balances could hold any conventional politician in check to a certain degree. These unfortunately are not ordinary times. We elected someone that speaks to us our level, and what we failed to realize in doing that, is that his intelligence actually does not exceed that of the average constituency that voted for him. A facade of a businessman and a fake of a politician. The businessman cloaked in six different bankruptcies, 34 felony indictments, defrauding investors through lying about the value of his assets, and an impending ban on doing business in the state of New York. A politician starting a trade war with our allies, inciting violent insurrections on the capitol building, destabilizing faith in our election system, running ad campaigns for unelected south african billionaires on the white house lawn, and blatantly defining the American judicial system. 

So as a young American, where does this leave us? The truth is, I do not know. There is this weird dichotomy between wanting to take up arms against the impending doom of tyranny, and wanting to get as far away as possible from the dumpster fire. As someone who wants to make a difference in this world, the former seems like the right, morally compelling thing to do. Where to begin however, how to fight? That remains the real question. Is it going to a rally and yelling in solidarity with all those that already agree with you? Maybe, but I doubt it stops there. There is no concrete direction on how to make a real difference here, because there is no historical precedent for what is happening (at least in this country). I want to make a difference, I want to help people, and I want to make sure the country that I love continues to uphold the pillars of integrity and virtuous characteristics that previously made us the greatest nation the world has ever seen. But the question of how remains. Look forward to seeing you all next week. 

Sincerely, 

An Aspiring Young Man