The Impossible Task

Alex Gratzek June 3, 2020

Looking around America today, you see a nation in disarray.  You see an inept governmental response to Covid.  When I was in jail, all my Chinese cellmates were to a degree nationalistic and would proclaim China numba 1.  When it came to Covid, they were happy to see America as number 1 in regards to Covid.  

You got Covid spreading across America leading to a quarantine, a loss of work accompanied by hard economic times, then you throw on the continual killing of black men by Police and you have the recipe for the protests we see.  I see the catalyst as the killing of George Floyd but the underlying kindling had been accumulating for decades.  

After the 1967/1968 riots, a government report recommended pursuing socio-economic reforms, basically to give everyone a larger stake in society but these recommendations were half heartedly pursued before being left bereft of funding.  One initiative which remains is the Head Start Program.  This was covered in the New York Times on June 2, 2020.  

The current protests are just the continuation of realizing the impossible task as laid out by The Founding Fathers, the creation of a more perfect union.  When the constitution was created, it was evident that the underlying issue would be slavery and in order to create the Union, slavery was infamously compromised over in order to bridge the chasm between the free Northern States and the slave owning Southern States. 

The contradiction between The Constitution proclaiming we hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal and the 3/5 ‘s compromise were stark and unbridgeable.   Maybe it was their genius, or maybe it was simply all they could do, but the founding fathers seemingly left a loophole with the pursuit of a more perfect union.

The original sin of America will stain our nation’s history forever like Stalins Gulags, the rape of Nanking by the Japanese, the Holocaust in Germany but the difference is those were seemingly one time events while ours is a continuing presence.  The issue of America’s creation has always been how to achieve the ideal which in practical terms remains so elusive.  The creation of a free equal society where justice and opportunity are blind while racism and bigotry is exiled.  

Looking around the world, many of our allies are just disappointed as evidenced by the struggling of Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau to articulate his thoughts on what’s going on in the United States.  Allied leaders of the G-7 are reluctant to attend Trump’s meeting in DC while the Chinese are having a field day mocking the USA for its treatment of protesters.  They flipped the tables on the US which had been criticizing China for the same actions aimed at protesters in Hong Kong who are seeking increased democracy.  

The wounds stemming from slavery, lingering institutional racism, lack of economic opportunities and other woes plaguing our country are eagerly being exploited by Russia, China and used by less dictatorships and authoritarian leaders around the world to justify their actions.  China and Russia know that sitting dominating the Western Hemisphere, America is in an unassailable position rendering it invulnerable to conventional invasion.  Knowing this, they seek to attack the one place they can, the soft underbelly of American society, its societal cohesion, by exploiting its internal divisions in order to weaken us in order to have a free hand to pursue their own devious machinations, see Hong Kong.  

After all, Russian influence in the 2016 election was disproportionately aimed at African-Americans in order to dampen enthusiasm for voting and create a lower turn out.  It’s a card they have been playing since the Cold War but this time the resources Russia devoted to interfering in America’s 2016 election are paying off handsomely.

America has a whole series of underlying issues it needs to address.  The creation of a more perfect union is an impossible task but that doesn’t mean we should give up in despair.  Ever so slowly things are changing in America and after seeing the ugliness emanating from the White House, most American’s agree Trump’s vision of a more perfect union is a dystopian future of hell on Earth.  

I hope American can hold on until November to get this bloated babbling bastard out of the White House.  Only then will America begin to repair the damage done by President Trump and continue on it’s Sisyphean task of creating a more perfect Union.  I hope one day America will achieve it’s elusive dream but for now, I just hope American can hold it together.