When thinking about the American people, columnist David Brooks is a glass-half-full kind of guy.
I see the glass overflowing with goodness.
Lynn Schmidt
In his farewell column to The New York Times readers, Brooks wrote, “The most grievous cultural wound has been the loss of a shared moral order. We told multiple generations to come up with their own individual values. This privatization of morality burdened people with a task they could not possibly do, leaving them morally inarticulate and unformed.
"It created a naked public square where there was no broad agreement about what was true, beautiful and good. Without shared standards of right and wrong, it’s impossible to settle disputes; it’s impossible to maintain social cohesion and trust. Every healthy society rests on some shared conception of the sacred — sacred heroes, sacred texts, sacred ideals — and when that goes away, anxiety, atomization and a slow descent toward barbarism are the natural results.”
I am going to have to disagree with Brooks on this one.
The vast majority of Americans continue to hold shared values of what is sacred. The disconnect comes when we continue to elect officials who no longer act as public servants or representatives. And because of gerrymandering and perverse incentives in primary elections, our representatives no longer represent our cultural values.
I am still deeply concerned about the state of our democracy. We have a president who is more concerned with accumulating personal wealth than with putting the interests of the American people before his own, and a justice system that is no longer blinded by partisan politics.
But it's too easy to blame the American people’s “hyperindividualism” for our situation, over which they have no control.
An overwhelming majority of Americans are appalled and sickened by the Epstein files and long to see those who committed the crimes of pedophilia, sex trafficking of minors, and all those involved in covering it up, met with the full force of the law.
A plurality of Americans finds the actions of masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Patrol, especially when shooting citizens practicing their constitutional rights or ripping 2-year-olds or 5-year-olds from their parents and caregivers and being detained in another state, unpalatable and un-American.
A recent Gallup poll found 67% of Americans trust their local leaders to handle community issues, compared to just 33% trusting the federal government. Another study shows that 84% say democracy is either in crisis or facing serious challenges. So by extension, that 84% is likely to view the raid of a Georgia county’s election facility by federal officials or the arrests of journalists as examples of our civic emergency.
The lion's share of Americans appreciates the 44 Danish soldiers killed in the United States’ war in Afghanistan, the highest per capita death toll among coalition forces, after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, with a majority of Americans still supporting the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
A majority of Americans oppose President Donald Trump’s plan to replace the White House’s East Wing with a $300 million ballroom, and these same Americans are most likely to be displeased with the president suing our own Internal Revenue Service for $10 billion when many Americans can’t afford their health care, let alone groceries.
During the same week Brooks’ column was published, I read countless stories of neighbors helping neighbors and communities providing for their residents during the intense cold and snow that blanketed most of the country.
We learned that Alex Pretti’s last words before he was shot and killed were “Are you OK?” and we saw Minnesotans respond by delivering food and coats to those in need.
The American people have not lost their moral compass. Rather, they have lost faith that their elected leaders share it. We are not descending into barbarism, as Brooks fears. Instead, the values held by ordinary Americans are profoundly disassociated with those practiced by the powerful and connected.
The goodness seen overflowing in communities across this nation proves that our shared conception of the sacred remains intact. Americans still know what is true, beautiful and good. We still recognize justice, compassion and human dignity.
The challenge is not to rediscover our values, but to ensure our institutions again reflect them. Nothing is wrong with America that cannot be fixed by what is right with America, and what is right with America is the decency of its people.
