I don’t remember a time before war. On September 11th, 2001, I was only in third grade and the events of that day shaped the world I grew up in. I don’t remember a time we weren’t sending troops to the Middle East; I had never flown on a plane before the implementation of the Transportation Security Administration. Fear has been the reigning emotion driving our political climate my entire life. There is no doubt this is a tumultuous time for our nation, but for me, this is how it has always been.
In the most recent election, we saw campaigners use fear-mongering, mud-slinging tactics to slam their opponent; but these methods are not new or unique. In the 1964 election, LBJ used this approach in the “Daisy” commercial, combining video of an innocent child with images of billowing mushroom clouds, insinuating that his opponent’s election would lead to nuclear warfare and the destruction of America’s children. Playing on the most relevant uncertainties of the time, this tactic leaves people grasping for a shred of security.
News media generates additional uncertainty, holding a magnifying glass over events that invoke anxiety. A twenty-four hour news cycle becomes an object of entertainment instead of information, and while most news agencies try to put a brief focus on heartwarming stories, media glosses over the mediocrity of our everyday lives, highlighting only the extremes. It leaves us feeling the constant pressure of insecurity.
These systems fail to consider that for the average American, life continues to move on. We still live and work peacefully with people we don’t agree with on a daily basis, often without a second thought. Thinking back to the events in Charlottesville in August 2017, we saw American people loudly proclaiming they would not put up with such intolerance. Over and over we see that hate and disaster is often followed by community; a sense that we must pick ourselves up, dust each other off, and keep going.
This is not to say I’m not appalled by the hateful, damaging new policies our current president is working to put in place, but I have to believe in the resiliency of the American people. I grew up drowning in a culture of constant fear, but every day we kept going. Our ability to continue muddling through everyday life gives me hope. And while the future of our nation is uncertain, we have been here before. And we have overcome.