Flint

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Make America Great

More than a third of New Hampshire Republicans want to “make America great” again. It is sobering to think that Americans are more concerned with greatness than rehabilitation or justice in their world. It puts our nation back in the Superbowl of international competition, crushing our economic foes like China, Japan and Germany, intimidating our political adversaries like Russia, Korea and Iran, reducing our role to domination and control.

But the time is wrong for the metaphors of domination, as the majority of voters will eventually attest. The Denver Broncos won the Superbowl on grit and teamwork, not with heroes. Maybe Von Miller was voted “most valuable,” but the pundits had a difficult time singling out a player or coach most responsible for their decisive victory. Perhaps it was fitting there was no Tom Brady or even a redoubtable Peyton Manning to suck up the media air as the story of victory. Every player assumed a role, made the tackle or block when called upon to do so. Kind of an anti-story when you try to re-tell it.

The big story of the current campaign is Bernie Sanders’ army of no-name, moderate income supporters. An average campaign donation of $27, he boasted Tuesday night. He seemed almost to choke with pride, when he described his undistinguished supporters. Not much noise from the Koch brothers, who are trying to find a horse to play in a crowded field of nags. Donald Trump has struck a chord, but it is a minor chord. His vote count was barely half of Sanders’ in a Republican state. He can spin this as “greatness,” but his Tower of Babel will soon be foreclosed.

The Flint water crisis has also taken center stage. The shame of politicians allowing a public health hazard to explode does not call for heroes but villains. Yet the reasons that water with high lead content was allowed to flow to citizens’ homes will inevitably be complex. Even though heads will roll, it will be hard to single out blame. There is sense of collective failure from bureaucrats, austerity-bound politicians, and a distracted media that captured the story after six months of alarming neglect. America can not be great while its eyes are focused on
international domination. We still have the “shame of the cities” to reckon with.

Donald Trump will continue to exhaust the air in the room, because he embodies his own message. He, too, wants to be “great,” and for a while he is convincing a vocal minority that his goals are theirs. But his ambitions are shallow and will eventually be exposed as bluster and contempt for his rivals. He may make a run in the playoffs, but he is not getting to the Superbowl.

America will be great when all its citizens are great, when clean water flows in Flint, when urban schools are rehabilitated, when college graduates and seniors have sustaining incomes, when clean air and water are consensus goals. There are plenty of venues to be “great,” even if they miss the hype of the Superbowl or next primary campaign. But even if you watch the Superbowl or the campaign, you will see the power of players working together, of personal greatness in common causes, and the shared hope of rehabilitation and justice.

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Are We Brave Enough to be Free?

Water, Roads and Education are getting play in today’s newspapers. Households in Detroit are getting shut off from water for nonpayment of bills, the federal highway trust fund is bottoming out, and the Flint, MI public schools has fallen $20 million in debt, emblematic of many urban public schools.

Is it possible that Water, Roads and Education are not basic rights in the land of the free and the home of the brave? Is it possible that these emergencies don’t keep the monied interests in this country up at night? That they don’t think,”I have so much and some people in this country can’t afford water.” Is it possible that they only drive on well-paved roads or their shock absorbers are so amazing that the potholes don’t register as they drive over them? That they cannot be moved by the overcrowding of public school classrooms, because their children attend schools where the largest class is fifteen students?

Perhaps the rights of individuals have been obscured by the facade of taxation. We can’t allow taxes to pay for what some lazy manipulators have not earned. We’ll give directly to these causes, so the government can’t squander our taxes.  We are charitable people, just not dupes of the undeserving poor.

How is that working out in the land of the free and the home of the brave? “A 90-year-old woman with bedsores and no water available to clean them.” (“Going Without Water in Detroit” N.Y. Times, July 4, 2014). One of the horror stories reported by the Wayne Metropolitan Community Action Agency, but only one of 904 water customers calling them for assistance in the last year.  Does private charity address the water needs of a thousand people in one city? How can we allow such want in the land of the free and the home of the brave? Or are we just free and not brave enough to support these needs with our taxes?

If we were a brave nation, the Flint Public Schools would not be $20 million in debt and the road I drive to my university position would not be fractured with gullies and potholes for the entire twenty years that I have taught there.  The evidence is under our tires and in the erratic attendance of urban secondary school students. The evidence is a family of five “with no water for two weeks who were embarrassed to ask friends if they could bathe at their house (“Going Without Water”). How do we let this happen in the home of the brave?

To be brave is to risk our resources to help those that need them. You can never guarantee that your charity will have the effects you expect, nor can you guarantee that your taxes will be spent wisely. But you can say, “I have enough. Let others use it for a better life.” We do not see this level of bravery in a free land.

Water, Roads and Education. Are these not inalienable rights in the land of the free and the home of the brave? Or are we only brave enough to provide them for our own kind?