Ask what you can do for your country

While rifling through aging files last week, I oddly discovered a copy of the front page of the New York Times dated Jan. 21, 1961 – the day after the inauguration of John F. Kennedy. Finding this specific front page wasn’t particularly surprising, as it fit with my current musings about country and leadership at this juncture in our nation’s trajectory. Still, it was a timely motivator to write – especially after my multiple re-readings of Kennedy’s, “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” A further kicker was the headline exclaiming “REPUBLICANS AND DIPLOMATS HAIL ADDRESS” – gee, an era when there was bipartisan and universal acclamation to look and act beyond one’s own self-interest.

For many years, I endeavored to teach and inspire future educators of various backgrounds and circumstances to develop community-oriented leadership qualities grounded within an ethical and humane foundation. Research and my personal discoveries indicate that profound life experiences and strong mentorships are the foundations of ethical, effective and compassionate leadership, though we certainly know that leadership approaches can and do stray from being moral and humane.

Within the past century, we have witnessed leadership morph into immoral, insular, unethical, repressive and even violent behaviors causing deliberate harm to humanity and the planet. Unfortunately, we have too many examples – Hitler, Idi Amin, Pol Pot, Stalin, etc. While this cast of catastrophic characters (note they are all males in national ruler roles) can be categorically grouped as particularly vile, we are seeing the “strongmen” descriptor now aptly applied to national leaders such as China’s Xi and Russia’s Putin.

Unfortunately, our president seems hell-bent on going mano-y-mano with Xi and Putin in a contest of dictatorial, self-aggrandizing, truth-denying and vindictive behaviors to hold and wield power. The three exhibit the triumvirate of “strongmen” – power, control and dominance (wealth and corruption are stirred into the mix, too). Regrettably, the U.S. president is apparently keen on not just a competition for the “international strongman crown” but also actively engaged in what he can learn from these two peers to finetune his autocratic and mean-spirited pursuits.

The current resident of the White House (or what’s remaining of that building) personifies a “resume” of unethical, immoral and illegal power that he continues to double-down on as troubling news stories detail week after week.  The question before us is now clear: how will we individually and collectively engage to change the deeply troubling national trajectory?

If we want to stop short of the Chinese dissidents’ actions in Tienanmen Square or of the Black Americans who bravely withstood the attacks of police dogs in the American South, then we need to move firmly, effectively and quickly. Recent events such as Minnesotans standing up to ICE agents to protect immigrants as well as local events, including citizens attempting to prevent the kidnapping of a Durango family legally seeking asylum, are more than adequate wake-up calls to the increasingly power-hungry resident of the White House.

There are everyday actions in which all of us concerned about the direction of an increasingly dehumanizing federal government can engage: phone calls and emails to elected officials; letters to the editor (while we still have a free press); protesting ICE’s illegal and aggressive detentions; conversations with neighbors; supporting general strikes/walk-outs; pushing back against governmental surveillance (hello Flock cameras!); and more. Showing up is what it’s all about. 

If it seems like a lot of effort and courage, consider what the Chinese dissidents facing tanks took on. It’s now clear that an open, free, fair, moral, ethical and compassionate society will not be served on a platter. Rather, we each need to set aside time to gather the ingredients, find collaborative community cooks, generate a new menu and get to work creating a more just, humane, compassionate and stable future than the one being maliciously crafted and deviously implemented.

Please recall what JFK emphasized to his fellow citizens and ask what you can do for your country. It’s even more applicable now than six decades ago.

– Jimbo Buickerood, Durango