(Dobbs) If Normalcy Survives, We Survive
Our confidence might crumble, but the institutions don't.
Normalcy.
It is easy enough to ask, do we even know what that means anymore?
For most of us, the old normal— whatever that was— is gone. If the streets felt safe back when we were kids, they don’t feel safe for our kids, or our grandkids, today. Four-letter words that once were taboo in public places now are printed and paraded on t-shirts. America has more guns than people, there is unabated raw sex on television, drugs are sold in the open, beggars have moved from Skid Row to Main Street.
Fire drills in schools have been augmented by active-shooter drills. Terror used to be what happened in a movie theater, today it’s what happens in churches and nightclubs, stores and classrooms. Paintings, essays, songs, they used to verifiably come from real people but now, we have AI. Precious few Americans take jobs today where they expect to stay for forty years and retire with a pension and a gold watch. Many modern jobs, for most of us, weren’t even in our vocabulary when we were figuring out what we would do for a living.
By those measures and more, the old normal is gone.
We can even sense a shift in how people think. There used to be just one kind of fact. Now, there are alternative facts. There used to be widespread belief in the empirical nature of science. Now, according to an Associated Press-NORC poll, almost half of all Americans express “only some” confidence in science, 13% express “hardly any.”
And then, there’s politics. No matter which side has led the government over the years, its policies always have come under attack by the other side. That is nothing new. That is the old normal. But now, it’s the very system that generates those policies that’s under attack. Elections, civil rights, democracy itself.
Is this what has to pass today for normalcy?
Maybe not. Maybe many of us, including me, are too blinded by short-term assaults on the old normal to recognize the long-term normalcy of our nation.
I started thinking about all this when an old competitor and friend, former CBS News correspondent David Henderson, sent me a new collection of photos he has just taken at the U.S. Capitol. Photos that evoke the message, at least as a visible metaphor, that a more complex world, a more challenging world, a more threatening world, doesn’t mean normalcy is dead.
David, a gifted and avid photographer, got special access to take pictures inside the Capitol, where he first worked as a young Washington reporter. What he recorded, in a capital city that has changed immeasurably since George Washington chose its site along the Potomac, is a building that has not noticeably changed since it was rebuilt after the War of 1812, when the British burned it down. What he recorded is a building that, despite the heat and anger on January 6th, did not burn down again.
To see it through Henderson’s lens is to be reminded that after all the horror of that day— the horror of people dying there, while others called for the deaths of leaders they loathed— it is the same resplendent Capitol, in the same resilient democracy, as it has always been. It is a democracy in which almost every citizen wants the best for America.
The challenge is, we are divided by our definitions of what “best” actually means, and divided even more by our polarized notions of what it takes to achieve it.
Those are huge divisions. Some believe we get there only by ensuring equal opportunity for a diverse and inclusive population, with participation in society by every religion, every race, every ideology, every sexual orientation.
Some believe that’s precisely what will fracture us and dilute the power of our capital, our culture, and our country.
Some believe the best is yet to come. Some believe the best is past.
I have my own beliefs about what’s best for America, and after thinking about the Capitol we still see, I have confidence that while new normals replace old normals and we can’t all be happy with what changes, we still live with a long-term state of normalcy. When Henderson was that young Washington reporter, he freely came and went through the Capitol. Whenever I covered Washington, it was the same. This time, he went through metal detectors, his camera gear was x-rayed, and he was examined by an officer with a wand. That’s the new normal and we’ve all learned to live with it.
Because once inside, it is still the Capitol. Although recently riven with chaos, the flag still flies, the institution didn’t crumble. Commotion still fills the chambers of Congress, but normalcy survived.
Our streets aren’t as safe as they were, nor our schools nor our churches nor our grocery stores. But still, amidst sometimes terrible losses, we manage to survive. Our morals have taken a hit, our vocations have taken a hit, even our rights have taken a hit, but still, we manage to survive.
If we can say the same for democracy, we still might not rest easy, but we can rest.
Over almost five decades Greg Dobbs has been a correspondent for two television networks including ABC News, a political columnist for The Denver Post and syndicated columnist for Scripps newspapers, a moderator on Rocky Mountain PBS, and author of two books, including one about the life of a foreign correspondent called “Life in the Wrong Lane.” He has covered presidencies, politics, and the U.S. space program at home, and wars, natural disasters, and other crises around the globe, from Afghanistan to South Africa, from Iran to Egypt, from the Soviet Union to Saudi Arabia, from Nicaragua to Namibia, from Vietnam to Venezuela, from Libya to Liberia, from Panama to Poland. Dobbs has won three Emmys, the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists, and as a 37-year resident of Colorado, a place in the Denver Press Club Hall of Fame.
How optimistic should we be? Sir John Bagot Glubb, in his book The Fate of Empires, says that
they last about 250 years. If you calculate ours from 1776 our jig is up in 2026. When we look at the Doomsday clock we are inching close to midnight. Optimism fading?
It is tough to not fall into the pessimism put forth by those who calculate the date of our demise, but when the comparative signs are so blatant we at least have to consider them closely.
Consider if we had the population of China. We both have about the same land area but we have something that they don't have, which is personal rights. Could democracy and the rights of the individual be sustained with five times the number of people demanding their God given rights, from that many viewpoints? Does democracy find it's weakness when the population gets too large? I wonder.
Greg, I rarely leave a comment but have to tell you how much I value your columns including today’s. Thank you.