Steinbeck's America - a redux

"Simply the greatest country on Planet Earth, the Great American Experiment, has played itself out. We have devolved from the fantastic to the banal. We have traded our love for each other to visceral hatred. We traded our patriotism for hedonism." 

In the words of the group Steppenwolf, "America, where are you now, don't you care about your sons and daughters - don't you know, we need you now..."

There is no doubt that John Steinbeck was a great American author. He was at his best when he tried to put his writing fingers on the pulse of this great nation. His novels on the subject of America and Americans are legion - he had a particular knack for diving more than an inch deep to see what it was which made us and this country tick. Today, we have no equal to John Steinbeck, which is our loss.

Steinbeck knew us from the Great Depression to World War II, to the Cold War. But during the Cold War, is when Steinbeck started to see a shift in this great country. We started to drift from homogeneous to tribal. And that was only the beginning of our bifurcation. If Steinbeck could see us now, his ink would be flowing, and not in a good way. 

Back in my high school and college days, I took a lot of reading and writing courses. John Steinbeck was one of my favorite authors. Living in the wilds of northern Maine when I was a sailor, I filled my off time not by watching TV (we did not have one), to reading more and more American literature. All that reading gave me a better perspective of who and what we were. I thought Ken Kessey did an admirable job about writing during the Haight Ashbury and Woodstock era of our lives, but still, Kessey was not Steinbeck. 

If Steinbeck were alive today, he might ask questions like, "America, what are you doing?" Or "America, where are you going?" Or "America, what happened to you?" Simply the greatest country on Planet Earth, the Great American Experiment, has played itself out. We have devolved from the fantastic to the banal. We have traded our love for each other to visceral hatred. We traded our patriotism for hedonism. 

After watching the disgusting State of the Union campaign speech last week, it finally dawned on me. We are just a shell of what we once were. We have gone from leaders like Kennedy and Reagan, to empty suits like Joe Biden. A leader like Donald Trump, who really turned this country around, is besmirched and reviled by his opponents. No matter who wins the next election, America will lesser instead of greater. Why? Half the country will detest the outcome.

For John Steinbeck, this is America today. Lost. Forgotten. A land built on heritage, now a land going under. It was good while it lasted, but now we are ready to devour each other.