Considering signal events

guest commentary by Jack Moseley, former award-winning editor of the Times Record

We never know the results — or the near-term or lasting impact — of events that are the critical turning points in the life of an individual or a nation. Birth, marriage, conflict, struggle. A diagnosis of cancer, for example, can result in arresting or eliminating the disease, or it can result in death.

Our current economic situation is such an event. No one is really sure of every aspect of how we got ourselves in this awful mess, and no one knows how or when it will all shake out. We have our have clues, of course, but I have not heard any individual on Wall Street or in government or anywhere else even suggest he or she has the full grasp and understanding of what is swirling around and through our increasingly fearful minds. Most seem to agree, today is only the beginning of the pain that our nation — that’s the American people, you and me — may suffer.

Most such signal events in the past have made us stronger and better. However, somewhere in the back of our minds — mine, at least — unthinkable fears and doubts that what is happening to our entire economic system may put this country on a downhill slide from which it will never recover. As Merle Haggard sang, “Are the good times really over for good?”

Instead of starring on the world stage, is America being reduced to merely a supporting role, just another player? Hillary Clinton may not have intended to convey that thought when she said fixing the world economic mess is in the hands of the U.S. and China. That sounds like this nation has acquired a co-star in the drama of world history.

Among all living Americans, I don’t think there is one single person who can personally recall when the U.S.A. was virtually self-sufficient, free and independent of relying on foreign countries to survive and prosper. There was such a time, of course. That was when the whole world wanted to come to our shores and enjoy the wonderful life of isolation and absence of international responsibility. We took care of ourselves by carrying big sticks and running Pancho Villa down in Mexico. But mostly, America stood alone and liked it that way.

Sometimes, I selfishly wish we could return to those times, which always look better in a rear view mirror. Sure, we dragged our featherbeds outside and slept on the ground  in the sweltering heat of relentlessly uncomfortable summers. And cowboys used rocks and saddles for pillows. Forget the chiggers and other discomforts of those “wonderful times.”

No, we can’t go back to the flawed and falsely recalled past that was never as “wonderful” as the romantics and fiction writers would have us believe.

America has been shaped and tested by perhaps fewer than a dozen events that the people who lived them largely did not fully realize. Certainly, they were unaware they were forging fires of historic change. They were just too busy for that, trying to struggle, survive, live and hope like Scarlet O’Hara that “tomorrow is another day.”

Here’s my list of the events that really changed the country and brought us to where we are right now. I, of course, welcome your comments, your own lists with additions or deletions as you see things.
1. The American Revolution – certainly that created a nation and a government unlike any seen before.
2. The westward migration and immigration that was claimed to have turned us into a “melting pot” that I fear never completely melted.
3. The Civil War with its lingering wounds that held the country together.
4. The industrial revolution that totally changed the way we live.
5. World War I that put this country on the world stage and changed the way we deal with the rest of this little ball on which we live.
6. The Great Depression that caused Ma in “The Grapes of Wrath” to proclaim the glorious destiny of the common man: “Rich folks come up, and their kids ain’t no good. But Tom, we keep a-comin’.”
7. World War II and the GI Bill that saved the world and transformed the common man with education, the real American dream and all the best that we can become.
8. Technology, the Internet and the dotcom revolution that have erased international borders and global economic obstacles.
9. And finally, the very real economic world in which we find ourselves mired and held down by doubts and fears and emotions some of us have never before known. This event is not an encore of the Great Depression. It’s something else.

I don’t know where it will take us. But I fear it will lead us for better or worse to places and experiences “where no man has gone before.” Health care is about to change. Education is changing. Religion is losing ground in our society. People are saving more and spending less. Taxes and the way we pay for things public and private are shifting more to the haves than to the have-nots. Huge industries are dying, but what will replace them?

Is our cup half full or half empty? How far will we spend ourselves into debt until we drown in it as a nation and a system of government? I just don’t know, but I’m convinced our kids are going to have to pay for our selfish, Scarlet O’Hara “I’ll think about it tomorrow” attitude.

Yes, I omitted the War of 1812 and conflicts in Mexico, Spanish America, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, etc. I did not include switching to an all-volunteer military, while that did institutionalize the economic gulf between the haves and have-nots. And except for making it harder to board a plane or obtain a passport, 9-11 has not significantly changed the way we live. Heck, I didn’t even include the sea of illegal immigrants into this nation, or the election of a black man as leader of the free world.

I do not claim that  my list is necessarily complete. There are other changes that could be well defended as belonging on this list. For example, the endless appetite of consumerism and the shift from single to two-parent  breadwinners and the breakdown of the American family. Who saw that one coming in our rush to have more and more stuff at the expense of values and our children that we once thought essential?

Please let me know what you think? Maybe I’m just another damned fool old man. Who knows, time will tell.

Life, luck and -30-