America is a mosaic of People, Places, and Cultures, all mixed in the melting pot we call America.
By John Van Dyke
Today it is hard to define who we are. This is not the America of 30 or 50 years ago. As a country, America is young, founded by immigrants who came here to escape the very things that many of todays immigrants are trying to escape. Yet we are reluctant to welcome them, after two or three generations of calling this our country, and now that we are comfortable. But, many of us are not so comfortable, and many even fearful of so many things in our lives changing over the last 30 years or more. That great middle class of prosperity that followed WW2 has all but disappeared. Industrial America has mostly gone off-shore and what remains is now dominated by robotics and driven by technology. A sea change for one of the largest groups of Americans that has seen a steady decline in prosperity, much of it by its own making. Baby boomers were not paying attention nor reading the fine print, when they voted for a lot of things that were sold to them by various leaders. It was a death by a thousand cuts. They were convinced by elected leaders that corporations rather than themselves should pull the levers of democracy, and gave corporations personhood. The corporations are being well taken care of, and they take good care of the politicians. This is todays America. A lot of people are afraid, and angry, they do not know who to blame for what they don’t have, or feel they are entitled to, and are easily persuaded by “friends” on social media to take up with a cause or group. Many of which are not real, and are run by very sophisticated foreign actors, and now many are organized by groups based in the U.S. Media has been damaged, by social platforms, and by leaders who say don’t trust the media. We are drowning in a sea of disinformation and misinformation that older generations cannot separate, fact from fiction. They are not technologically literate. They are again making what may be some bad choices as they did in the past. Change is difficult, and it is never easy to blame yourself for your bad fortune that perhaps you voted for in the past. Blame someone else, they did it. They are causing all the problems. Because they are not like us. Take up arms, overturn decisions, their voice doesn’t count, their vote doesn’t count. This sounds like something from another place, no, it is what is happening now, here, in America today. All this has been happening in a time of political disruption and a global pandemic that is far from over. This is American today, this is us, for now.
An American Mosaic has been photographing, filming, and having conversations starting in 2017. People and places around the country. The places in the middle, the little places and the big places, who we are.
Listen to the Podcast. Di-a-logue, An American Mosaic on Apple Podcasts.
