Those Were The Days

While in the Kennedy Center in DC, the wife and I ventured off to a hallway that contained some of the speeches, statements, and positions made by JFK--President John F. Kennedy.  What is to be most admired about JFK is not necessarily the wide view he had on issues, the country, and the world as large as it was, but the leader he became after listening to others and after not always performing best under certain crises. 

It took time for JFK to come around on civil rights issues. In fact, he had to learn from actions and sacrifices made by ordinary people in the struggle for civil rights and racial justice. 

Likewise, it took the Cuban Missile Crisis for JFK to give a speech at American University that was so valued that it was published by Pravda, which was the official newspaper of the Communist Party (click here for the speech).

As I walked out of that hallway, I spoke to an employee of the Kennedy Center and lamented that we don't have leaders like JFK anymore. We don't have leaders who could truly work with those from the other party. Rather, we have political parties and  leaders who have passionately embraced tribalism. We have political candidates who claim that they, by themselves, can solve the social and economic problems we face while asserting that their opponents can only destroy our nation. And because of the tribalism that their parties and perhaps they themselves promote, they are preventing themselves from learning. They are preventing themselves from learning from those either they cared little for or opposed and from their own errors.

Listen to the speech previously linked to. Note how JFK was  was able to identify the positive attributes of the people of an enemy nation  while criticizing its ideology. He also spoke loudly about our nation's own vulnerabilities. Those abilities are why JFK could learn from others and from his failures. And those abilities are absent in most of the political candidates for whom all of us will vote tomorrow. The absence of those abilities allows for some to give into the desire to rule over those whose views they oppose or whose lives they disapprove of. The absence of those abilities is why we Americans can no longer even agree on what the facts are. 

We are about to see the demise of our nation. Too many people, from all ideological sides, passionately embrace tribalism and are willing to believe conspiracy theories that fit their political beliefs. Their embrace of tribalism has moved them to demonize their opposition while canonizing themselves. And in so doing, they have guaranteed our nation's self destruction. And it won't be until it is too late, until they have seen the destruction they have wrought, that they will be able to see the cruel foolishness that their ignorance, arrogance, and self righteousness brings.