A tale with a beginning, a middle and an ending. A cliffhanger at times, yet a happy ending. Just what everyone one wants: a little story, digestible with a moral to share, struggle then triumph over evil. Yes. It’s a quintessential saga of America. The good, bad, ugly and beautiful, all rolled into one but with a good ending.
Sleep follows a good ending. Moral outrage is tweaked. Personal valor and effort triumphs over evil and the good guys – and girls – live happily ever after.
A fairy tale this is. History is filled with such narrations. Except when it isn’t.
It is the ‘isn’t’ that we focus on today. The history of the larger tale that embraces all the others. The really big beginning of a story, the really, really long middle – with many of its own starts and finishes – all leading toward the climax where the big ugly is finally figured out and solutions are thought up to thwart the enemy. Then the victory tale begins in bits and pieces, like Tolkien’s Trilogy of the Ring, so many campaigns fighting the bad guys until finally, finally, in an all-out battle, right wins over wrong.
World War II was like that. At least the history of World War II was told to us in that manner. Besides, we saw it played out in daily newspapers. It was a nail biter from beginning to end. The nation sacrificed much to support the best ending possible. In the end the war was won, good triumphed over evil, and the boy gets the girl, dancing in the street and tickertape parades followed. Much celebration the world over, except the victims, the losers, and the oppressed who are always defined by the story, too.
We all like a good story. Millions, and billions of books attest to that. So, too, movies. And TV shows that imitate movies. Stories. Lots of stories. Good triumphs over evil. The usual.
Until the story line is confused from the get-go. It begins with truth fighting untruth or lies. With time the trouble builds as the untruth becomes more credible and the audience simply can’t tell the difference between the right and wrong. The very sinew of the story is a twisted mess. We, the audience, know we are good. We are on the right side. But we know the enemy as family and friends and colleagues. We know those folks think they are right. We know otherwise. Or feel we know. But do we?
There it is – the plot line and the temper of the story all in one. The suspense builds as we learn more each day who is the good guy and who the bad. What is fact and what is lie. What is narration and what is propaganda. What is real and what is fake. All the while the actors on stage are shouting “fake” and “fact” until we don’t know which is the real one.
Today America is embedded in such a tale. A nation of educated people – those who attended public and private schools and earned degrees attesting to their achievement. Many of those went on to study more earning higher degrees of education. Some went farther than that and emerged as professionally trained doctors, engineers, theologians, researchers, scientists, mathematicians, et. al. They invented new technology and stretched science and medicine to amazing frontiers. They placed men on the moon and now build spaceships that travel to faraway places millions and millions of miles from home. They accomplished much with their learning, their accomplishments.
Until today when all of that is held apparently in disrepute. The educated are now the enemy. Those without the learning fear those who have the degrees. This is the new have and have not of our society. It is no longer a tale of money and who has the most, who the least.
The good and evil are intermixed to the degree we no longer know who the good guy is. The very means of our answers to the riddles are doubted so much they are no longer useful tools.
Then what is? What is the core of this new story that must play out so good and evil are once again clearly identified? If victory is the final end, what is it to look like?
Do we at least know that? I’m thinking not. Please, God, prove me wrong.
June 12, 2019
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