Forgive me for raining on that parade

20 January 2017   Eating breakfast this morning, looking for diversion, I turned on CNN, only to be reminded of the event I had forgotten about, one that apparently “the whole world is watching.” I could take only so much of this before I banged out this rant.

It was the repeated claim about the resilience of American democracy that really got to me—this wonder of handing over power from one elected president to another. After decades of McCarthy, Vietnam, Iraq, income disparities, and now someone who lost the election but won the presidency with a vile campaign, you will have to forgive me for asking: When will the United States take its head out of the sand and face its condition?

Sure it’s nice to celebrate, and to be proud of one’s heritage, even understandable to put a good face on a difficult situation. But not when this masks—and it has repeatedly masked—the reality facing the country. Serious problems have been festering in the United States for decades, and they have not been seriously addressed.

And when will the rest of us face the fact that a world of America the great, even if sometimes true, is a world of perpetual conflict, as other countries that think of themselves as no less great, weigh in.

I will stop here, except to refer you to my previous blog, where I suggested what concerned people might be able to do about this, and to my book, Rebalancing Society, that describes this deterioration, in the U.S. and worldwide.

© Henry Mintzberg 2017 

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