Wes Long: Whom does America belong to?

As I look to 2021, I am struck by the dizzying array of crises that have occurred across our country. Politically, economically and socially, we’ve all been through much, and we have more to address before equilibrium can be established.

Considering our present holiday season and the approach of a new year, however, we’re never short of occasions to assess the state of things and reorient our direction. If we have endured the past few years and yet are still determined to do what we’ve always done, then little will have been learned. Seeing as we may differ in diagnosing the ills we’re experiencing, might I share what I see from my little sphere?

Like W.E.B. DuBois, I see lying, stealing and killing abounding under the names of advertising, free enterprise and national defense. I see laws, particularly those that help working people (i.e., safety regulations, labor and antitrust measures, etc.) rendered into dead letters.

With Thomas Frank, I hear pundits and demagogues presenting each market-driven disaster as disasters of socialism, “leading to further penetration of society by market rationality.”

I have seen technological innovation made into a fetish with no concern for what it does to society (surveillance, the sale of data, etc.) or for the individuals left behind. I have seen these influences taking their toll on our minds and hearts, subordinating all else to the making of money for the self (and even more for one’s employer).

It would require more space to explore these problems, but I suspect the heart of them all is our own fears. We fear for our future and desire security; we fear for our place in the world and long for acceptance; we fear the unknown, and keep it at bay as much as possible.

Limitless justifications of the rich and the powerful are often the prices Americans are called to pay before they’ll be allowed to join the venerated ranks of the well-heeled. No wonder, then, that we should be mired in endless debates that only steel our stubbornness while overlooking any political substance.

And that is where the mischief occurs: Not on the internet comment section, but behind closed doors with the lobbyist and the politician each benefiting from unnoticed subsidies.

“The greatest threat to democracy,” wrote Eugene McCarraher, “is and always has been the gilded imperium of money, and only movements that aim at ending that dominion have any promise of democratic regeneration.”

Our greatest American moments were when we embraced such idealism, from Reconstruction (briefly) and the Populist movement of the 1890s to the New Deal and the civil rights era.

I believe we can still rise to the promise of these past movements in our own day, but it will require change on our part. Now is the time to begin. We need a new politics, one that expands our view as a community rather than narrowly defining itself in terms of power and selfishness.

Government is not a foreign entity apart from us that interrupts our calling to build up our personal piles of stuff; it is the accumulated effect of our involvement and cooperation with one another for a better world.

This world is a glorious place that is worth beautifying and preserving; all living things upon it have worth and dignity. Our politics must be informed by this wonder and love, or we will continue to groan under the weight of corruption, vitriol and despair.

As we approach a new year, let’s turn the page together, both in Utah and all over America. To whom does America belong? It belongs to we the people.

Wes Long, Murray, is a graduate of history from the University of Utah, interested in serving this nation, taking care of friends and family and feeding his cat.