Presidential elections have begun to bore me. I did vote. I wouldn't have missed it for anything, but I am also mature enough to know that the 2024 Election stands out as hardly more than a blip in the course of history—just another year in America's Political League Championship—hardly different from America's football or basketball championships. All of the players have been repeatedly vetted to do their jobs. They celebrate their victory until the next contest.
After four years, the nation's media organs will start hyping the next political championship-round, exploring the strengths of the competing candidates, analyzing their strategies, and laying odds on which of them will defeat the other. More and more, the results mean less and less. It hardly matters who wins, since neither side appears able or willing to address America's basic problem—or to use Former President Barack Obama's signature term—"fundamental" problem: America's lack of unity and national will. They have disabled the nation's forward movement and preparedness.
I define "national will" as the product of idealism about the possibilities of the "American Dream". Most Americans have an inkling about the significance of this expression, whether they still believe in the American Dream or not. It means having a framework of faith in something that will give us satisfaction during the course of our lives.
"Idealism" means possessing ideals. The ideals help us focus our quest, defining its possibilities and limits, that will help us move forward and encourage trust in the systems that make the country run.
We do not have those things at present, and we put ourselves at risk trying to move forward on the thin ice of disunity and discord.
The first ideal we need as believers is nationhood. Marcus Garvey wrote "Nationhood is the highest ideal of all peoples." Just the experience of citizenship in your own nation gives you confidence and a sense of belonging. Its citizens give the nation identity, foundational ideals, and intentionality with a constitution that lays its functional ground-rules.
Don't excuse a feeling of alienation or let alienation defeat your sense of intentionality and forward movement. If the ground-rules and historic presumptions have changed, then renew them in a new nation. Don't excuse a second-class mindset. If you find yourself criticizing the nation, you may do that just to avoid condemning your own acceptance of defeat.
Second-class people have a mindset that cannot deal with real leadership. Leadership will condemn them; so they mostly want enablers, who will let them get away with subordinating themselves to a hostile status quo. Timidity and insularity control a second-class mindset. In the old day, society had convents and monasteries to cull the timid and insular from the mainstream of public life.
People who could not handle close, human relationships, or who could not represent themselves in public, had an outlet, just to give them refuge from real life. We can't do that now. The best we can do now is to call out timidity and insularity from our ranks, with a demand of a pro-active response to disunity and discord, instead of caving in to it.