To regain American optimism, we need to stop hating each other

I wonder if anyone not named Dylan wrote more and better songs evoking the zeitgeist than Paul Simon.

As the '60s unfolded, he gave us "Sounds of Silence."

"... and the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls ..."

And as they ended, with the horror of assassinations, a futile war and Richard Nixon in the White House, there was "Bridge Over Troubled Water."

"When you're weary, feeling small, when tears are in your eyes, I will dry them all. I'm on your side ..."

It was only a few years later, with things getting worse and worse and with a nasty boil growing on the American psyche, that he gave us a song that resonated so well with what we were feeling as Americans.

He called it "American Tune."



Simon wrote the song in 1973, less than four years after we went to the moon. I'm not sure there was anything that evoked the attitude of "can-do America" better than John F. Kennedy saying in 1961 that we would put men on the moon and bring them back safely before the end of the decade.


And damn it, we did it. JFK was long gone by July 20, 1969, but no one who followed him said we shouldn't be doing it.

Neil Armstrong

If you want the most basic difference between then and now, consider that 20 percent of Americans believe it never happened, that the moon landings were faked on a Hollywood sound stage.

The most horrible thing about that isn't that people believed it, but why they believed it. Many of them figured the landings were faked because they didn't believe we were capable of doing something do difficult and doing it well.

In fact, President Kennedy addressed that.

"We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win."

Fifty years later ...

"No, that's too difficult."

So we can't go to the moon, we can't feed the hungry or heal the sick. but praise the Lord, that new iPhone7 came out just in time to replace that dangerously obsolete iPhone 6.

Ron Jeremy

And hey, we replaced that blurry old HD television with Ultra HD. Now we can count the wrinkles in Ron Jeremy's ballsac when we're watching porn.

Has it really been just 25 years since I thought my 27-inch Sony Trinitron was the greatest television possible? Even if it did practically give me a hernia every time I had to lift it?

The problem is, we stopped believing in ourselves and in each other.

Conservatives believe the government is incompetent and venal, and liberals look at business as sociopathic and greedy. And of course, tens of millions of people who aren't making it blame one or the other or both.

Even worse, people on one side have a tendency to see people on the other side as the enemy. It's reminiscent of a funny story from 60-70 years ago. A rookie Congressman shows up for his first day and an older man from his party tells him they have to stand together against the enemy.

"You can count on me," the rookie said. "I won't give an inch to the (other party)."

The veteran shakes his head. "The (other party) isn't the enemy. The Senate is the enemy."

It's easy to be friendly when things are going well. In an era of prosperity, there's enough to go around and the party is big enough for nearly everyone. But in an era where the beers runs out midway through the evening and all the hors d'oeuvres are gone expect for the platter of veggies, we end up pushing and grabbing.

It isn't just a question of being optimistic or positive in a Pollyanna sort of way.

But if you live in despair, you don't live long.

"I don't know a soul who's not been battered, I don't have a friend who feels at ease. I don't know a dream that's not been shattered or driven to its knees.

"But it's all right, it's all right for we've lived so well so long. Still, when I think of the road we're traveling on, I wonder what's gone wrong. I can't help it, I wonder what's gone wrong."