American Genius Has Overcome Worse Crises Than This
In the dark days of Vietnam, assassinations and Watergate, it looked like the U.S. was close to collapse. It didn’t happen then, and won’t happen now.
Detroit 1967: “It was a great fire, man.”
Source: AFP via Getty Images
On Wednesday, Washington will witness one of the most momentous transitions of presidential power in U.S. history. As a mere septuagenarian Englishman, I shall say nothing here about either the dramatis personae quitting center stage, or those about to assume it. But I do have a claim, a passionately cherished claim, to offer hope for an American future that matters almost as much to the rest of the world as it does to the nation’s own people.
As a young reporter, I was present in the U.S., and later in Indochina, through seminal moments in late-20th century history. I was a spectator of events that made it easy to suppose, as some of us did suppose, that the country was close to collapse, both as a society and as a dominant influence on the world stage. It is because we, the gloomsters, were so wrong then, that it seems so right to cast out an anchor to optimism now.