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| Image by JJ Jordan from Pixabay |
{Or insert the sound of a throat clearing, to preemptively fend off attacks by far lefties, far righties, Wokies, and the Intersectional Inquisition.}
At this point in our story, I must toss in a few paragraphs from the Reality Checks, Caveats & Premises Department (RCC&P) before proceeding.
The American experiment wasn't conjured out of thin air. The Greeks dabbled in democracy, the Romans ran a republic (at least for a while), and the Brits managed to make a Magna Carta. In my semi-humble opinion, the American experiment can be defined by quoting the most important passage of the Declaration of Independence:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
If you accept that statement as a fundamental given (whether or not you believe in a creator), perhaps one of the most fundamental of givens… Well, If you don’t accept that statement, I fear it’s time for us to go our separate ways; you can keep the cat but I’m keeping most of the vinyl collection.
Big BUT, I freely acknowledge that the next sentence in the declaration could have been:
“Assuming, of course, that you are Caucasian and male."
That was undeniably the way America worked at the time and it was an undeniable flaw. However, it was the local version of how most of the world traditionally worked, a version of reality that lives on here and there.
However, I maintain that some dramatic progress has been made in the last 250 years or so, particularly when compared to however many thousands of years it was considered normal for a given Fred or Barney to club a cutie down at the waterhole to clean the cave and keep an eye on Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm while he and the boys were partying down at the Loyal Order of Water Buffaloes Lodge while being served and serviced by their slaves.
When my mum and dad got together they, and most other people, believed that a man’s job was to bring home the bacon and a woman’s job was to be a domestic engineer. Period. In light of the way many folks look at things today, including me, they weren't entirely correct. But I’m inclined to not only not judge them but to also say thanks. They weren’t evil, and incidentally, they were part of the generation that survived the Great Depression and won World War Two.
While they were busy saving the world they didn’t know if there would be a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, an era of unprecedented prosperity that lasted from just after WW2 to the late 1970s and would benefit their spoiled kids more than them. Things started getting weird after that, which I’ll get into later.
Finally, let us acknowledge the elephant skulking in the corner of the room. H. sapiens will be H. sapiens. While I’m profoundly grateful for the dumb luck of being a child of, and living in, a country that’s a product of Western Civilization, I’m smarter than I look.
My gratitude is based on two things. Although I think Western Civilization in general, and the USA in particular, is the best we’ve done so far, both are as flawed and imperfect as the H. sapiens that somehow came up with them. Therefore a — We’re number one! We’re number one! — overheated sports fan sort of attitude can be as tacky as wearing socks with summer sandals.
