“No matter the target--bankers or the poor--it seems to require its leaders to say, 'There's nothing wrong with you America.’ … The notion that Americans are pure, and what's really wrong with this country, has everything to do with aliens--the media, the Muslim, the poor, the illegal, the rich, the elites--but nothing to do with the natives strikes me as comfort food. Moreover, it stands in direct opposition to much of the patriotic rhetoric we hear. If America is so mighty, if its people are so dynamic and great, how can it be that they are so often and so easily deluded? Perhaps repeatedly telling voters ‘You're a good person. It's not your fault.’ is essential in politics. I don't know.”But we do know. Telling voters they are perfect and never wrong is essential in politics, but only because we make it so. Look, America’s virtues far outweigh its vices. When I criticize her for being overly anxious in today’s uncertain times, I do so only out of tough love. I want us to stop whining, quit asking Daddy Obama to save us, grow a set and get back to the work of shaping destiny.
Yet, as Coates’ halting words suggest, it isn’t easy to speak the truth about the public to the public in public. It’s easier (and safer) to dance in the end zone and join the “America: F**k Yeah!” bandwagon. But the truth, however unpleasant, must be said. Once it’s acknowledged, problems are so much easier to reckon with. We’re a great people. The recent record speaks for itself.
What I ask is probably impossible. But we (and our boot-licking politicians) really do need to get over ourselves, and face life as it is. Only then can we ever hope to change it for the better.
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