It is easier to curse the darkness than to provide glimmers of light. The former fuels inaction in the face of threats and provides glide paths toward disaster.
America, writes Sen. Mitt Romney, R, Utah, in a recent essay in The Atlantic, is in unhealthy denial about what ails it. And “when entire countries fail to confront serious challenges, it doesn’t end well,” he warns, noting that inaction and gridlock on immigration and border security, drought and climate change and ongoing threats to our democratic processes are potentially cataclysmic.
We agree and would add gun violence to the list as we shed tears of anger and sadness of yet another incident of mass gun violence just days after Congress passed a modest, but historic gun safety law. At least seven people died and dozens were injured as a gunman on a rooftop fired repeatedly on a crowd gathered in Highland Park, Illinois, to celebrate the Fourth of July, something communities across this country have done since our nation’s founding. Tragically, public celebrations and gatherings in schools, churches, malls have become soft targets of violent opportunists. And in each instance, the violence steals something from within us and replaces it with fear.
The essence of Romney’s warnings is the broader, systemic failures of leadership in the face of crisis, a level of abdication for which the political left and right bear responsibility. “Elected officials put a finger in the wind more frequently than they show backbone against it,” Romney writes. “Too often, Washington demonstrates the maxim that for evil to thrive only requires good men to do nothing.”
All of that is true but begs the issue of how to change the crippling dynamics of gridlock and complacency. Romney says “we Americans have lived in a very forgiving time, and seeing the world through rose-colored glasses had limited consequences.” But the nation faces an important reckoning that “will require us all to rise above ourselves — above our grievances and resentments — and grasp the mantle of leadership our country so badly needs,” Romney writes.
The nation is at an inflection point as consequential as 9/11, the Cold War and Pearl Harbor, and the complex issues at play are being debated in an environment that rejects good faith efforts toward meaningful solutions. The country, Romney contends, is in “a national malady of denial, deceit, and distrust,” and warns that a return of Donald Trump to office “would feed the sickness, probably rendering it incurable.”
The bottom line is that this is our nation and we will continue to get the nation and the leadership we as citizens elect, which isn’t necessarily the one we need. Planning for the future requires a level of serious engagement in the details, not the spewing of alternative facts and conspiratorial musings. It requires citizens to act seriously and to vote seriously in the best interest of the nation and not along the narrow bands of self interest or quasi-tribal loyalty that has rooted itself in our politics.
Romney is telling us what we need to hear, that our nation depends on us to actively reject the political failure that has led to policy paralysis.
The best time to prepare for the future was weeks, months and years ago. The next best time is now.
