I’m not a person who gets embarrassed. Maybe that’s some chink in my armor. I don’t know. But I’ve learned this about myself over the years.
I have to say that in the past couple of years, I confess I’ve periodically felt embarrassed for my country.
—when a President acted boorishly on the world stage, making juvenile comments about, well, a lot of things.
—when mayors, district attorneys, and sometimes governors blithely dismissed rioters, refusing to prosecute and hold them accountable before the law.
—when universities, corporations, and American elites rushed to adopt new sexual orientation and gender identity and critical race theory paradigms, ostensibly to demonstrate their woke virtue, but in actuality to preserve and develop their position and profit.
—when elected officials acted like wanna-be dictators, mandating a long list of lockdown restrictions in the name of public health.
—when a President talks about the debacle in Afghanistan in alternative reality terms no one, except maybe those who report to him, believes is happening on the ground.
It’s not so much a matter of pride or patriotism as it is a sense of lost moral credibility, a loss of place and purpose in the world that looks to this last best hope for democracy.
Ideals are important. Losing them to hubris or irrational idealism is not something I find comforting.
© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2021
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