Have Americans Lost The Ability To See The Big Picture?

By Robert Kimball Shinkoskey Photos: Wikimedia Commons Americans today seem unable to see “the big picture.” Maybe that is why great prophets of western civilization worried that the people around them did not have “eyes to see” or “ears to hear.” They were ill-equipped to live the kind of life they all wanted to live.   Our lives are constantly chopped up into tiny little pieces that demand huge amounts of attention like relationships, jobs, living arrangements, child rearing, church attendance, elections, household chores, clothing, schooling, auto maintenance, health and wellness, the nightly news. We believe we have got our lives under control when we have a handle on the most important of these in our lives. However, there are other more community-oriented pieces of the puzzle that are totally out of our control. We leave to others the handling of things like government, education, health care and public health, war and peace, science and technology, crime and punishment, social media, the economy and debt spending. That we clearly do not participate in public affairs is evident by all the climate disturbances, political disturbances, economic disturbances, social disturbances, military disturbances, and emotional disturbances that are occasioned by those few ambitious politicians among us who take charge of the government but are more interested in money and power than public peace. When a democratic society is functioning smoothly and capably there is something our ancestors called “domestic tranquility” that settles in over the homes, neighborhoods, towns and cities, counties and states, and the entire nation. There once was a large degree of such tranquility among the American people, because they were largely of one political, economic, social, and spiritual mind in this country. The states of this nation ratified a constitutional law document and a Bill of Rights that had broad support across the country and that provided peace for the great majority of the people.   The problem today is that our families, our schools, our political parties and communities, our government units, and our corporations have completely lost touch with the “founding” personal and political virtues of this country that lead to peaceable living. Corporations, banks, and industrial companies have lost a sense of what business schools used to call “corporate responsibility.” They once understood they had a responsibility to act like good citizens, but today they have gone off the deep end with false or misleading advertising, constant efforts at monopolization of markets, charging excessive interest rates on already overburdened consumers, and abject politicization of their participation in public affairs. Political parties, churches, media, non-profits, and educational institutions who once held themselves to high standards in the community have sloughed off their righteous pride and joined the tidal wave of competition and exploitation common everywhere in society. For their part, the American citizenry have racked up a long track record of looking the other way while rising generations get bush-whacked by a tidal wave of illegal drugs, alcohol, tobacco, crime, and social media.   We have lost touch with the history of western civilization, including its religious and political history, the history of our own country, the idea of personal and political virtue, and an understanding of the two basic kinds of law and government that have competed with each other for the past 5,500 years of recorded history: democracy and monarchy. Our current president is obsessed with rewriting U.S. history, as any usurper of consensual government always is. He has positioned his own administration’s policies and procedures as the start of America’s “Golden Age.” Essentially, he is asking us to believe that the jettisoning of constitutional government for personal rulership equals true greatness. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Golden Age of any democracy is its initial phase when its people and its leaders hold true to the political and economic principles spelled out in its written constitution. Unfortunately, the designation of Trump’s second term as the start of America’s first “Golden Age” is appropriate in one very negative sense. It is truly the start of open boasting of luxury-loaded monarchic aristocracy in America. Before this time, America always pushed back against the existence and priorities of its increasingly powerful monied class, as our ancestors did during the time of the Robber Barons in the late 19th century. Today the wealthy class is rapidly undoing the socio-economic progress the country has made for the past 250 years, and we seem oblivious to the ultimate direction they are heading. Robert Kimball Shinkoskey is the author of books and editorials on democracy, religion, and the American presidency.