Understanding the Choice Before Us

Ozymandias 

BY PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

I met a traveller from an antique land,

Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;

And on the pedestal, these words appear:

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

The United States is an odd nation, a democratic republic working an irregular way toward becoming more fully democratic with rights and privileges shared more equitably among its ethnically and culturally diverse population.  No other modern nation state has attempted such a feat.  True, it has become the world’s wealthiest nation with the largest military and its currency is the standard all other nations are measured against.  But it’s had a hard time maintaining internal cohesion.  Political thought and opinion leaders have for decades  strutted the public stage boasting that the U.S. is the greatest, freest, most successful nation in history and that its people are better off than any others.  We took arrogant pride  in being superior Americans as a right.  It has contributed to a very human result.  Not satisfied with everything they need, some significant part of the population demands they get everything they want.  Others who have most of everything they want, want more, and they can’t get it if the more they want goes to people who have less.  Still others who have been deliberately and systematically kept out of the competition for more of what they need and want have declared they will put up with it no more. It’s not a condition unique to the U.S.  It is common to all peoples in every nation.  What is unique to us is our enormous diversity of cultures and ethnicities that have not found it easy to live together in harmonious community. One reason is that what is socially normative for the nation has been defined by white middle and upper class men, and a few women, for most of our existence.  They have been quite honest in their belief that they have acted for the good of all and are more than reluctant to surrender their place to a rag-tag collection of others whom they believe incapable of responsible leadership.

It has brought us to an election nobody wanted.  One candidate is a not very bright, poorly educated, serial philanderer whose entire life is built on lies, deceptions and cheating.  But he has the swagger of a carnival barker with the polished skill to sell the unwary on how horrible life is, how rotten the nation is, and how he alone can make it better. His previous term a president was one of unparalleled chaos, ineptitude, and national humiliation, but to hear him tell it, it was the best of times ever in the history of the world.  He sells it effectively and well. It’s a bit surprising since he also complains and whines like a spoiled twelve  year old about how unfair people are to him, especially those who want to make him accountable for a life of criminal misbehavior. 

The other candidate is an affable wise old man inclined to tell long stories about days of yore that get more elaborate with each telling.   However, he is intelligent, well educated, knowledgeable and experienced in the ways of the world.  He understands the issues, facts and figures facing the nation, and like other wise elders, knows how to delegate responsibility to younger, able, honest people. The democratic virtue of negotiating in good faith to reach mutually satisfactory results has been his life long passion.  During the three years of his current presidency the nation has catapulted out of a deep COVID recession, led the world in reducing inflation, funded the rebuilding of the nation’s infrastructure, increased wages for workers, and set a path for global technological leadership.   It doesn’t mean all is well.  The southern border is a mess.  We need a new immigration system that works in as simple a way as possible.  Income inequities are a problem.  And we are far from being a nation of harmonious cohesion among ethnicities and cultures. 

To elect one candidate will lead us triumphantly into the sands of Ozymandias.  Not overnight but surely. Democracy will be the first to go, then personal freedom.  The U.S. would look a lot like today’s Hungary or pre-WWII Italy except that we would be ruled by a chaotic pretend despot untethered from reality – think of Mel Brooks playing Gov. William J. Le Patomane in Blazing Saddles.

To elect the other would preserve and strengthen our democratic republic as an engine of opportunity for all. We would move toward a fuller measure of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness with fewer obstacles placed in the way of anyone.  Not without difficulty, the U.S. could pioneer the way of harmonious cohesion of diverse peoples and set an example for a better way to global peace. It would retain its place of honor in the community of nations without strutting the stage declaring “We’re Number One.”

I don’t know how the election will turn out.  I do know that if a certain felon is elected we will enter a season of national humiliation, shedding the mantle of global leadership, and discovering the arrogance of American pride to have been an illusion.  It would be a steep price to pay to  learn that national pride and national humility are not opposites, and that surrendering freedom for security is a path to political slavery.  And let no one be so foolish as to claim it would make us a Christian nation.  Jesus Christ would have nothing to do with it.