The Long Puzzling Journey from Then to Now

Did America Forsake Me or I Her?

©MIH83 via Canva

Surprised? I’ll say!
How long since black chunks
clanked on your coffin lid
like frozen chocolate?

God, it was cold that day.
You’d died in the tropics
in your tux on a cruise boat,
Mom in the bathroom,

sat down and died.
Since then you wonder
what the world’s been up to.
No hurry. We’ve got time.

So commences a longish narrative poem in blue-jean dialect – nothing fancy – which attempts to explain the evolution of America from February 1968, when Dad died, to November 5, 2025, when America did. I claim no value for the words, only for the enterprise, which quivers with questions worth considering.

To tell a story – from A to B – one must know where A and B are. On the calendar, I know, but on the map of consciousness I’m less clear. During most of these fifty-seven years, I’d have insisted that America couldn’t evolve from A to B – from democracy to tyranny, pluralism to dictatorship, hope to hopelessness – our Founders’ idealism and our complex system of government would prevent it – not to mention the deep desire of the governed to “live free or die.” I’d have been wrong. My dad would be appalled (still energetic in imagination at a hundred and four). His politics weren’t mine. His were his schoolmate’s, George H.W. Bush (“Poppy” to his pals), three years his junior, who grew up two towns over (in Greenwich) and wintered in the same hoity-toity Florida enclave. (I’d shaken the hand of Bush’s dad, “the Senator”. My cousin served in the first Bush administration. Jeb and I briefly attended the same dancing school, I’m guessing in madras pants.)

I was never a “Bush Republican” – I voted against – but my dad would have been – he might even have landed a government post, if he’d lived. I shied from the smug goodness of that “upper crust”. But they were patriots. They’d fought – and many died – in “the War.” They’d managed America’s rise to a benevolent superpower. They did not strut. We all liked Ike, even though he didn’t talk too good. The America they envisioned – the vision I inherited – embodied a dream of self-government: how a great nation ought to behave. Was America perfect? Far from it. Our politics debated paths to betterment. Yes, we had blind spots – about blacks, women, gays, poverty, the innocence of capitalism – but we wanted to be that “shining city on the hill,” we really did.

Fast-forward fifty-seven years to when a hefty majority of Americans disliked and distrusted America and voted knowingly for a wrecking ball to its heady dream. The party of America the Grim trounced believers in America the Good. More than three-quarters of Americans saw us “headed in the wrong direction,” notwithstanding unprecedented prosperity and peace. The stats said things had never been better; the voters said they’d never been worse. How to explain to my revenant dad this shocking discrepancy?

The fun part of word-making is doping out your story before you tell it. A must lead to B by plausible progression. Though I’ve pondered this mystery in an oceanic tide of words, I remain non-plussed. How on earth did this happen? How did I go from feeling American to the core, proud of our accomplishments, to feeling banished, ashamed, a shivering waif outside its gates? Did America forsake me or I her – or did we, in that sour marital phrase, “grow apart”? I reside here still – and will – but as a stranger in a strange land, booted from my joy. Maybe by describing this change to my dad – in verse and commentary – I’ll understand better.