“America has a long way to go until it becomes the country it thinks it already is.”
When I first read that sentence I was stunned by its simple truth. In a few words a former Canadian defense attorney summarized not only why our criminal justice system is in such a mess, but why our nation is.
Indeed, the political decisions, social policies, and behavior in the world community we as a people support underscore the fact that the kind of country we think we are and the kind of country we actually are could not be more different.
Like most nations there are many wonderful things about us that we all cherish. And like most nations there are many others things about us that are anything but wonderful. The latter is the part we have trouble with.
“America has a long way to go until it becomes the country it thinks it already is.”
That statement is not only an assessment of where we are as a nation, but suggests the path we can follow to bridging the gap he identifies.
But just as it is difficult for us as individuals to face issues about ourselves that prevent us from being the person we think we are, or the person we say we want to be, it is equally difficult for us to confront ourselves collectively as a country.
We Americans are not prone to honest introspection. We prefer to believe that we are the greatest nation on earth, the last great hope for humankind, the one nation everyone wants to come to, and so anything wrong with us pales in comparison to everything that is right with us.
Armed with this kind of self-delusion we insist that we have more freedom than any other nation when it isn’t true, that we have the strongest democracy in the world when it isn’t true, a better educational system when it isn’t true, a better healthcare system when it isn’t true, that we are more compassionate than any other nation when it isn’t true, that we welcome strangers in our midst more than any other nation when it isn’t true, that we have a better judicial system than any other nation when it isn’t true.
“America has a long way to go until it becomes the country it thinks it already is.”
This is a truth I want to explore in detail in future Blogs. One reason I do is because I am persuaded that at the core of our self-deception as a nation is the fact that years ago we convinced ourselves that we were and are a nation especially blessed by God, that America was and is the new “promised land,” enjoying special divine favors not given to other nations.
These beliefs are now deeply rooted in the America psyche, creating a mythological framework that not only allows us to explain away our moral flaws as a people, but has led and still leads us to avoid addressing in our politics and in our religion institutions the root causes of the political, social, and religious upheavals we have experienced and are experiencing at this critical time in our country’s history.
But if we can engage our past and our present honestly, we might see more clearly what each of us can do to help our country actually practice the freedom and justice for all we think we already do.
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