Perspectives

I’m not much of a fan of modern country western music. It just doesn’t resonate. Much of it sounds like ’70s bubblegum music with a twang. Big-thighed, thirtyish, balding white boys in black hats singing of love, for all I know, for their customized Ford F-150s. I prefer Patsy Cline and Johnny Cash. They sang of love and loss and sorrow, and you sensed they felt it because they actually lived it.

Sometimes I write a line and I think, “Damn, that’d make a great country western song!” I thought I heard an individual once describe himself as “halfway married” when, in reality, he was actually claiming to be “happily married.” Haha! Quite a difference, and what a great opening line for a song of regret. “She thought we were happily married but I was only halfway married and ….”

Invariably over the course of a day my mind will wander, depending on the prompt, from the state of the nation to America’s political leadership, environmental issues, reproductive choice, health care access, poverty, Republican simpletons, Tea Party yahoos, spineless liberals, the perverse Israeli/American relationship, the nation’s many wars, American imperialism, our economy, elections in Russia or congressional ineptitude.

During a recent particularly bleak day privately assessing America’s current position and prospects, I wrote, “I’m about halfway to a place I don’t wanna be.” I immediately scribbled underneath “country western song.” It’s a good line and a valid determination of where a lot of Americans find themselves. If you have half a load on intellectually, then you cannot help but be alarmed at where the United States finds itself today.

I have a relative who recently participated in a surgery in a western U.S. hospital. A number of physicians were involved and over the course of the operation, the conversation between the doctors turned to whether bullets or gold would be more valuable (and tradable) if, heaven forbid, the center didn’t hold and America’s government collapsed. I’ve a call in to see what was the consensus of that esteemed, educated assemblage.

Any student of history clearly understands that what is or what was is no guarantee for what will be. No nation has sustained itself at its “peak” indefinitely. Historically, simply persevering as a national entity has been success enough. Many nations, many empires that once were, simply do not exist today — in any form. Let alone in a reduced state such as Great Britain or Russia.

It is hard not to consider that America is inexorably moving to an Orwellian oligarchy predicated on (necessitating) a gullible electorate skillfully manipulated to voting against its own interests. There is a despair setting in, a growing feeling, a realization that the game is rigged — that those who have the most will inevitably get the rest.

Yes, that is a simplification, but how long before such perception erodes what confidence remains in our American “system”?

American exceptionalism is best summed up in two modern advertising slogans: “Be all that you can be” and “Just do it.”

That is so American and, seemingly, so yesterday.

We desperately need a new vision. A new order. A new song.

As Walt Whitman commemorated in his poetic vision of the United States, “I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear ….”

It’s about work. Life. America. It’s about happiness and hope.

All in short supply these days.

Jepson is a 24-year resident of Florida. He’s fiscally conservative, socially liberal, likes art and embraces diversity of opinion. Reach him at [email protected]