Dear America: An Open Letter on History in the Making
Dear America, It’s time for each of us to let loose with a resounding “enough is enough.”
It’s time for heaping plates full of truth, love, and compassion. And it’s beyond time to feel like we are connected, alive, and glad in our hearts. You see, we are ready for a lot of good news, big banquets, celebratory concerts, and trips around the world for real and in person.
Dear America, today is a day for new and improved, crisp and delicious, loving and kind, matter plus energy squared, peace and love, and being and becoming.
After coming to an end of four years of toxic lies served on a platter for breakfast, lunch, and dinner — enough is enough.
Dear America, after a horrific and shocking insurrection, followed by even more attempted gaslighting during these dark days of history, we clearly see what lies constantly heaped on top of more lies does to a culture.
Dear America, now that it’s been made abundantly clear — propaganda, outright lies, and disinformation by the truckload — all led us to an insurrectionist mob and 5 dead in our nation’s capitol.
Dear America, What’s it like in the future, when you are no longer the Divided States of America? Here in 2020, we’re all pretty worn out, brought down, and feeling like we’ve been left in an energy efficient washing machine overnight, and need to be wrung out and hung up on an actual clothesline in the bright sunshine.
I’m certain things work out for the better, but wow, now our country is a big steaming unappetizing mess in one pot. When you have a minute, send a message back through the time portal to let us know how things improved, and which foolish notions vanished completely. The things holding us back from being more evolved and caring versions of ourselves — horrific culturally embedded norms that have made us less as human beings for far too long, things like racism and homophobia. .
In the before-time, pre-pandemic, our country was known for coming together in times of crisis. During the Covid-19 pandemic years, not so much. Where are Lincoln’s better angels, Rosie’s Riveters, or Ginsberg’s angel-headed hipsters?
Dear America, where did your big ideas go? Why haven’t we landed on Mars yet? Why isn’t there a mission to Moon-sized program focused on the global climate crisis? How did we get so easily led by charlatans, phonies, cowards, and creeps? The kind of people who don’t even believe what pops out of their mouth, mere seconds after they say it.
Oh, constant and so far from subtle divisions and discords roiling throughout our land, how did we reach this place, in this exact time and space? Dear Home of the Free, my country ’tis of thee, what do you want to truly be?
Our economy of recent decades has been all about activating the “Buy! Buy! Buy!” chip installed in our brains. Here’s what happens when the economy grinds to a halt, when a pandemic turns on the “Survive! Survive! Survive!” mode of being. First people only buy the essentials: food, shelter, and clothing. Everything else follows from these three things. Days go by in a blur. Drink coffee or tea, eat, shave, check email, shower, text, Zoom meeting, walk the dog, pet the cat, sleep. Rinse and repeat.
Dear America, ask not what you can do, just start doing it. Pick a day, time, hour to begin, and don’t stop until you’ve changed history in wonderful and amazing ways.
Dear America, it’s time to think deeper, think again, think in new ways, think about what it means to be human, and think about creating a smarter, and more caring world. You’ve helped to create some of the best artists, scientists, explorers, and visionaries in the past — and you can do it again.
Dear America, never forget, you are the land of Martin Luther King, Walt Whitman, Benjamin Franklin, Susan B. Anthony, Rosa Parks, Alexander Hamilton, Miles Davis, Georgia O’Keefe, Woody Guthrie, Jackie Robinson, Charles Bukowski, Dinah Washington, Frank Capra, Cher, Amiri Baraka, Link Wray, Duke Ellington, Wyatt Earp, Bob Dylan, Dolly Parton, Jonas Salk, Muddy Waters, Angela Davis, Helen Keller, Emmylou Harris, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Muhammad Ali, Prince, Lenny Bruce, Edward R. Murrow, Tuli Kupferberg, Tom Waits, Willie Nelson, Jane Fonda, Brad Pitt, Anthony Fauci, Diane di Prima, Gil Scott Heron, Maya Angelou, John Trudell, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nina Simone, Allen Ginsberg, Tina Turner, Oprah Winfrey, Dolly Madison, Taylor Swift, Iggy Pop, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Emily Dickenson, Lord Buckley, Buddy Holly, Hunter S. Thompson, Johnny Cash, Billie Holiday, Henry David Thoreau, Jennifer Lopez, Hank Williams, Langston Hughes, Ansel Adams, Dexter Gordon, Diane Arbus, Steve Allen, James Baldwin, Patti Smith, Pete Seeger, George Carlin, Patsy Cline, Bruce Springsteen, Joan Didion, Orson Welles, Stacey Abrams, Gore Vidal, Calamity Jane, and Thelonious Monk.
Dear America, one person can indeed change everything for worse and for better. Never again doubt it, since we’ve just witnessed it happen again, in front of our very eyes.
We’ve lost our way in the deep, dark woods, and yet we’re on the path to a clearing up ahead — just beyond those tall trees and past the next bend in the river. Can we hold hands yet? Not now, but soon, we’ll be able to. Remember, touching hands leads to whole worlds opening up.
Dear America, you are remarkable, diverse, ready to discover what the future holds, and resilient enough to handle anything that’s coming your way. What began as an idea has been evolving in a perfectly imperfect way over a few centuries. What’s next?
Dear America, once upon a time everyone in the world wanted to come here. We were the cool kids on the block, the bee’s knees, the cat’s pajamas. We were a welcoming place, during those times. We even placed a welcome message to people everywhere on the planet — and put it in New York Harbor. “Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free…” We were the melting pot of the whole world. And never doubt it — we were made better for it.
Dear America, rising up and wising up must happen at the same time. And the time is now. Enough is enough. Stop holding yourself back. Quit hiding your better nature. Do you still believe in yourself? Have we finally reached a new beginning?
Dear America, is this the awakening that’s been dreamed about, connected to an actual higher good, and with true liberty and equality and justice for everyone?
Oh, beautiful places spaces faces of a land so lovely — and expansive and uplifting. You are in so many ways ready to expand into full bloom like no other moment in our history.
Dear America, at your best, with your guiding and welcoming spirit, you’ve offered a safe haven for countless refugees escaping murdering torturous governments, wars, famines — and often certain death — and somehow millions made it to our shores, were granted asylum from war torn lands, and America was what they thought it was before they arrived. It was a land where they could become anything they wanted to be. You see, you’ve got to believe in yourself like the whole world used to believe in us. Many of those people, whose lives were saved, transformed, made whole by what we offered — have told family history tales to their kids, and these stories continued to be passed down through the generations. Will these stories always live on? Always.
Dear America, diversity has been a part of us from the beginning. It’s built into the (complicated) past, present, and future of our cultural story. Feeling threatened by diversity is like feeling threatened by today turning into tomorrow.
Dear America, let’s bring back common sense. In the TV westerns bad guys wore masks to rob the town bank. Here and now, in the pandemic during-time, good guys and gals wear masks, especially in states where governors and mayors have mandated it. Not political by any stretch, strictly common sense — with science to back it up. Mask up and see you on the other side.
Dear America, so many things you’ve wanted or needed or asked for have arrived. It’s been a long time coming, but this day has finally come. Here we all are, with dreams, drums, songs, pictures in our minds, and future-changing visions in our hearts.
Just one more question. What are we going to do now?
Russell C. Smith
Co-author of:
Manifestos, Reinventions & Declarations: Notes on Living through History in the Making
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