As the country reaches its 250th birthday, I can’t help look back to its 200th in 1976 and think about how much has changed, not only in daily life, but more importantly in the very essence of America.
In 1976, The United States was still a country of optimism in the future, of believe that we would always make life better and that each generation would be better off than the last.
Toady, when I speak with people just out of college or early in their working lives, what I hear predominately is fear that their jobs, their professions, will be done in by artificial intelligence sometime before they reach retirement. In politics, both parties embarrass philosophes which focus on scarcity. Not enough housing, not enough jobs, not enough to go around anymore. Forget thoughts of a country with boundless resources. The watchword today is who gets what of what we have left. Republicans would take from the poor and give it to the rich. Democrats would take from the rich and give it to the poor.
Both those approaches start from a place of scarcity, not one of optimism or of any possibility that a growing economy will help everyone.
I had just finished getting my masters in journalism from Northwestern in June, 1976. That July 4th, I lived and worked in Arlington Heights, snagging my first reporting job for the Daily Herald. The country was finally free of the Vietnam War. And a major two-year recession that saw 9% unemployment was finally ending.
I remember friends and I, all young people with big plans for our lives, our futures and the country’s future, cooking out at my apartment complex and then going to Arlington Park for fireworks that bicentennial birthday evening.
Today, fifty years to the day, the Herald has been sold to the Chicago Tribune with its jobs likely to disappear. Arlington Park has been bulldozed to the ground by a multimillion sports business (Da Bears) that for decades complained about wanting to own its own stadium, only to suddenly be repelled by the idea that owning property in Illinois means paying property taxes.
Scarcity again, or perhaps selfishness. They come from the same root, don’t they? The feeling that there’s just not enough anymore?
Closer to home, Northwestern can’t afford to maintain a new stadium without turning it into a concert venue too, despite what that will do to the character of life in Evanston. And Evanston itself can’t create more low-income housing without destroying its single-family neighborhoods to do so.
I am an old man now, just recently reaching 73. I busy myself these days with charity work and inconsequential hobbies. The days when I tried to change the world are over.
But I try to speak with young people often to hear their hopes and dreams for the future. And sadly, what I hear more often than not is they have scant hope and more dread for what’s ahead in their lives.
My 250th birthday wish for them is that they are wrong, that there will again come a time when we all can feel the country has enough to grow with everyone in it benefitting and its shores again open to others as well.
As my idol Edward R. Murrow would say, Good night and good luck.
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