By Kathy Hughes
Contributing Writer
The election turned out pretty much the way I thought it would, and I was so looking forward to it all being over and done with. We all need to get on with our lives. Evidently, that is where I calculated wrong — some people don’t realize it’s time for it to be over.
Post election protests, demonstrations, riots — under whatever name, are senseless. Hello — it’s over now. Just exactly what result are protests going to bring? The president-elect is not going to resign or go away, and how many of the protesters voted when they had the chance? Protests usually want to bring about a specified change; these folks are just “blowin’ in the wind.”
On the other side, what does an America “made great again” look like? Those factory jobs are not coming back; not because they went overseas, but because most manufacturing is automated now. What with driverless cars and robotic surgery, automation is not going to stop. Granted that American workers have been horribly let down, but not even prayer is going to bring those same jobs back. (Other jobs, yes, one would hope, but America is not going to look the same as in 1960.)
As an aside, maybe if factory workers hadn’t been so greedy (not all, I’m thinking of auto workers here), the dream jobs would have lasted longer. Yet even 50 years ago, it should have been clear that automation was going to replace workers on the factory floor. By digging in their heels, the can was kicked down the road and the result was even more drastic.
It sounds like I’m blaming the workers, but I’m not. The effects of the deterioration in our standard of living could have been eased by leadership. It is the lack of leadership that is to blame for our current state of affairs. It is through great leadership that America has been able to prevail through adversity.
Forward-looking leadership is what characterized George Washington , Abraham Lincoln and, if I may, Franklin Roosevelt. Particularly with Lincoln, who was detested by many contemporaries, he was able to see beyond devastating economic and social change to envision a new and changed society based on a new set of values, new bases for prosperity and new lifestyles.
Slavery was not only fundamentally wrong, but it was obsolete. Machines were replacing people on the farms, in the cities and slavery, more than any other factor, would hold America back. With the advent of railroads, mechanization of farming, influx of new migrants and the dominance of cities, Lincoln saw that Americans were going to face overwhelming changes. There is never going to be a “back to the future.”
Fear of the future and fear of change is what killed Lincoln. An effective leader does not look back, and words like “again” do not express a leadership which is seeing a way forward. Change is just as frustrating and painful for me as for everyone else. I don’t like it one bit, but, in my view, it is inevitable.
Our elections are over, and I could be wrong, but I don’t believe our search for leadership has been met. Is there no one among our population of millions who is up to the task? When I look to the past, I admire the leaders who were able to move America forward, and prosperity seems to have followed. What has preserved our country through every crisis in the past has been the emergence of a constructive, visionary leader.
