Remember when John Lennon sang, “You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one”? What was he thinking?
I’m having a crotchety current-events-fueled senior moment. Even with the Vietnam War still on and Watergate yet to come, there were dreamers in 1971.
The world is a better place for having had Lennon, but with dysfunctional government in America and Brexit in the United Kingdom, I wonder how, or if, “Imagine” would have even been written today.
When I ponder why civility has dropped over the years, I always end up with social media as the major culprit.
So many draw the same conclusion that I’m wondering if we’ve grown too comfortable with that excuse. Maybe the cause of our disharmony is staring back at us from the mirror.
Were past leaders just better at getting things done or would social media’s influence have diminished them too? They were certainly flawed. President Lyndon B. Johnson’s best efforts failed in Vietnam; John F. Kennedy had the Bay of Pigs incident; Ronald Reagan stumbled through the Iran-Contra affair.
If you look deeper, though, there’s more to the story. Johnson’s Great Society produced, among other things, Medicare, and civil rights legislation was passed with bipartisan support. Reagan and then-House Speaker Thomas “Tip” O’Neill were able to work together without disagreements turning personal.
Even those who engineered the Vietnam War weren’t losing Cabinet members every month due to inept White House management.
Kennedy’s administration gave us the Peace Corps, and unlikely allies Alabama Gov. George Wallace and New York U.S. Rep. Shirley Chisholm teamed to get minimum wage for domestic workers legislation passed. Earlier, Chisholm, despite criticism from her own supporters, visited Wallace in the hospital after he was shot.
Think about that. Wallace was a segregationist, and Chisholm was a black congresswoman, yet they found common ground. It could be done.
We’ll never know how social media would have altered American history from the 1960s on. Naively, I like to think that civil rights progress and Medicare would have prevailed anyway.
I said that finding common ground could be done. Maybe it still can. I hear it’s easy if you try.
— Jim Newton, Itasca
Being ‘liberal’ is being ‘elite’?
Once again, I find the word “liberal” paired with “elite,” and it confuses me (“Biden's surrender to pro-abortion radicals damages his 2020 prospects,” commentary by Marc A. Thiessen, June 12).
As I see it, “liberalism” arises from an ability to entertain a variety of (often conflicting) ideas and to apply critical thought to evaluating those ideas and their logical implications.
I'm not sure how that ability confers “elite” status. Maybe somebody can help me understand.
— R. Kent TeVault, Lisle