Opinion: This was supposed to be the future

When I was 10 years old, 2024 seemed forever away. It was the right time and place for Star Trek or Star Wars, but not for a relatively average person like me. (I cling to the idea that I was a relatively normal kid, no matter what anyone says about my childhood.)

While I would assume that there was a part of me that knew that outer space would never be populated by Americans traveling so quickly somewhere else, there was also a part of me that never imagined that America would become a different country — one for every year. Which I find myself wondering as I write these columns whether anyone with a gun will come to me because of them. If this was the America I grew up in, I didn't know it.

I realize that I grew up as a white child in a mostly white community, and that made my experience very, very different from someone with darker-than-olive skin from a southern Italian. So, while there are people who have good reason to feel paranoid about being stalked, that hasn't been my experience. My experience was that John F. Kennedy was the first Catholic to be elected to the White House and the adults in my life were thrilled about that. My experience was a Miss America pageant where every contestant looked like me, at least in terms of skin color. The prejudice my ancestors experienced when they arrived from the old country disappeared when I was old enough to understand what that meant.

Now it's 2024, and as I look around my country I feel quite frankly terrible. Is this really the best my generation can do? Is this really the best that my generation can leave for the next? And why, Lord, is a country of over 332 million people unable to come up with better presidential candidates than two old white men who should be dancing and watching the sunset with their husbands, not running for office?

America considered itself a beacon to the world. We have brought democracy out of the closet and into the open. We have made it the form of government for which everyone must work. And then we seem to have taken a downward turn and forgotten much of what we once stood for.

I find myself wondering how bad it is in those countries in Central and South America where refugees are willing to risk their lives to come here – where we'll shoot you if we don't like the jelly you bought for our sandwich. Guns, not the bald eagle, became a symbol of America. Last year, more children were killed by gunfire than by cars.

Growing up, we had unions that protected workers and allowed the middle class to not only grow and expand, but actually make America a very rich country. And then came Jimmy Hoffa, the mob, and Ronald Reagan's trickle-down economics. Is anyone feeling the drops yet?

Suddenly unions had bad names. They were destroying the American manufacturing system. As unions gained notoriety, their numbers declined, corporate bosses became obscenely wealthy, and the middle class simply began to disappear. My father put three kids through college on one income. Try it today.

Despite how Joe Biden and Donald Trump try to make it seem, our generation is fading. Clearly, peace, love, and pot didn't change the world for the better, and we didn't seem to have a plan B. We are leaving an America divided along the lines of hatred. We no longer simply disagree about politics. We hate people and politicians who don't tell the truth. Civility and dignity went the way of the fedora. It seems that the gap between right and left cannot be bridged. And maybe it is.

I don't know what the solution is to fix what's broken. The Supreme Court cannot even reform itself, and we have been looking to it for the wisest and most appropriate answers. We can't do that anymore.

We seem to be leaving this country in such a mess. I really thought we would do better.

Elise Patkotak Alaska columnist and author. Her book “Coming to Town” is available at AlaskaBooksandCalendars.com And in local libraries.

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