What we're made of...

Thomas Jefferson said, “The government you elect is the government you deserve.” Reflecting on this past presidential election, and not withstanding the detailed critiques on public media, I’d say it’s all about our general U.S. character. As a nation, we are undeniably short-sighted. Five years is a long time away. We generally only understand things right in front of us, the here and now. Sound bites are our normal attention span. We’ll also take black and white any day over complexity. Things that span presidential terms or longer, and are complex like climate change, we flip-flop on. 

And we’re proud capitalists. Meaning, we believe private ownership of business best facilitates a society with a prosperous economy. As such, we always put monetary worth above all other. Winner vs. loser. Efficiency over ethics. And we focus on “what’s in it for me?” We’re proud individualists and accentuate differences. Pick your era, and it’s “us against them.” And don’t limit these differences to just skin color; it spans ethnicity, economic station, religion and geography.

So, it’s easy to vilify the concept of being “woke,” i.e. someone who is aware of and actively attentive to important facts and issues related to racial and social injustice. Recently, too, education has come to signify elitism. Being educated means not understanding the struggles or lives of those with less opportunity.

So electing someone who’s a maverick, who goes against the norm of the educated, the woke, the other, who bucks the rule of law makes sense to me. We are what we choose, based on what we’re made of.

– Tim Thomas, Durango