Today, I read a large part of a speech by the prime minister of Canada. He used a lot of rhetoric and jingoism but he said a lot that was worthy of note. It brought to a head something that must have been simmering inside of me for some time now.

Yes. I’m pretty much disgusted with the way things are turning here in the USA. I think Trump is a bad influence. His example leads the lowest of us to think they are justified in how they perceive the world and behave within those tenets.

I worry about where it will all end up. The price of gold and silver is insane. This business about Greenland is just nuts.

In my opinion, Trump has an inflated idea about the importance of the USA to the rest of the world. It’s like the person who thinks that everything is about them and that others feel that way too. We are not a major power. And we never were. It’s just that we had a greater stability than some other countries and so they looked to us and our dollar, making the USA seem like it was something to be followed.

But that stability is crumbling. There is a lack of cohesion. Factions are developing within the general populace with widely varying ideas about what is right and good. Without unity, we are not a United States.

We need to come back to values that worked and could still work if we all just pulled together. Tolerance of others. Freedom of speech. Cooperation.

We didn’t have to make America great again. It was always great. It’s just that some people didn’t see it that way. They didn’t really think it was good enough. What they really thought was that it could be greater. It doesn’t have to be. Good enough is good enough.

And the current focus isn’t really where it needs to be. We need health care reform. We need to take care of our indigent and poor. We need to shift our focus to here, home, this country, and away from trying to acquire things we really have no right to acquire.  

Grand ideas are fine. Really. Without them we would never have gone to the moon. But the genres of those ideas need to be grounded and real. It’s good to have a goal. But lofty goals are often unobtainable. Break it down. Keep it simple. Work every day to get that one small thing accomplished. That’s the way to success as individuals and as a country.

Grandiose gestures are often calculated and empty. The real world is made of people doing what they have to do to get by and plugging away at that day after day.

That’s where the focus needs to be. On people and supporting them, all of them, every day in every way.

Do I know how that should be done? No.

 All I know is that it starts right there.

Images courtesy of Flags USA and Quote Fancy, respectively