"Voters in 2016 are more skeptical than ever of leaders in all realms, beset by a lack of growth in real wages, and vociferously divided on immigration, race, religion, policing, guns, terrorism, refugees and drugs." – Howard Fineman, HuffingtonPost
I keep reading about the cynical and angry American voter. I hear analysts talk sagely about how the "voters" are mad the "leaders" haven't fixed things to their satisfaction. I hear we voters are scared. I hear we are uncertain about the future.
I think we Americans need to get over ourselves. We need to quit whining and blaming our problems on the big, bad wolf. Here is precisely who we have to blame for our own unhappiness: ourselves.
Nobody is going to fix our personal messes for us. Nobody is ever going to make our lives over into a 1950s Norman Rockwell magazine cover. Not George Bush, not Barack Obama, and not Donald Trump.
I believe we are fearful because we feel out of control of our lives. We are out of control of our lives because we have no center. We have lost our center because we have forgotten why we are here on this planet. Every religious tradition reminds us of why we are here and what our purpose is in life; every branch of science tells us our purpose as well: adapt and evolve.
To paraphrase the late Joseph Campbell, we are here to discover our personal gift and to honor the cosmos by becoming a master of that gift. Mastery is a boon to others. Through mastery, we gain wisdom. Through wisdom we grow old and die graciously. This process of discovering our gift and gaining mastery of it is how we develop our center. Once we develop our center we know who we are and we understand what is important in life.
The intellectual and spiritual emptiness we feel is why snake-oil salesmen like Alex Jones prosper on the Internet and why demagogues are successful at manipulating our fears.
We are pulling out of a recession of historic magnitude. Science and technology promise miraculous breakthroughs to heal and feed the world. In the U.S., we are living in relative prosperity. Yet to listen to some Americans, these are terrible times. We are living in a dictatorship that is running FEMA camps to enslave the population and our country is going to hell in a handbasket.
One of my favorite teachings I learned growing up and attending North Pole Baptist Church is Luke 17:21, wherein cynics taunted Jesus Christ and demanded he show them the so-called "Kingdom of God." Christ admonished them to quit looking for the Kingdom of God outside themselves but to look for it within.
Christ's admonition is apt today for Americans who are wandering in the intellectual and spiritual desert of the Internet looking for "signs," which false prophets eagerly provide.
Author and philosopher Deepak Chopra warned readers in 2008 the campaign being waged against candidate Obama (led by Sarah Palin) was dangerous for the United States. He noted the negative campaigning was less about attacking the candidacy of Obama than it was an assault on the fundamental principles of hope and idealism, the anchors of candidate Obama's appeal. The result, Chopra warned, could be the rise of the "shadow self" that animates the dark powers of the American psyche, which like the legendary Golem, could destroy us. In light of the looming 2016 campaign and the appeal of Trump, Chopra is a prophet for our time.
In the context of Chopra's analysis, it is as if a dark spell has been cast by a real-world Voldemort rendering Americans incapable of living a shared reality.
So here is my wish for the New Year.
I wish I could count to three and snap my fingers and we would all wake up from this terrible dream. I wish we would be idealistic again. I wish we would hope again.
Elstun W. Lauesen is an economic development professional and a lifelong political observer living in Anchorage.
The views expressed here are the writer's own and are not necessarily endorsed by Alaska Dispatch News, which welcomes a broad range of viewpoints. To submit a piece for consideration, email commentary@alaskadispatch.com. Send submissions shorter than 200 words to letters@alaskadispatch.com or click here to submit via any web browser.