Will America Survive?
Op-Ed
Yes, it will! And I have more than enough reason to say this: America is an idea. It is a perpetual idea, born from Man’s everlasting pursuit of happiness. And not only that! The United States of America is the greatest human experiment of building a country and a society from scratch, based on the most daring Western thought of personal freedom and equality.
This trivial but fundamental truth about America should be encouraging us to believe that nobody and nothing can destroy the nation which has constructed itself via unbearable pains and failures, having finally emerged as the strongest social, economic and military power humanity has ever known. America cannot and must not be a venue for racial issues. America has to exist beyond and above the racial atmospheric pressure of colorism for the sake of holding up the idea of Thanksgiving of 1621.
America was constructed through a mix of red, white, black, brown and yellow sweat, and their mutual effort to give the world a sample of a new-type of shared habitat, having invited into the common racial crucible people of all hues and cultures. The true American history is easy to read but difficult to live through. Misunderstandings happen, but they have a tragic tendency of bringing about misfortunes and agues which usually come on horseback and go away on foot.
But fortunately, against all vicious powers and brutal desires, there is a sharp weapon out there, made in the United States: the broad American smile and the strong helping hand which has always been in abundance in this wonderful land. The American melting pot is not broken, as its enemies now gloatingly believe, and even if it has some temporary accidental cracks, there will always be enough welding fire in the country to put it back together, and get it working again with the same habitual success. And the skillful smith the crack needs to be mended by must be around too.
America knows well how to handle the historical lesson offered by these weird times of ours, and if somebody ardently desires and is maliciously ready to tear up the Old Glory and give it to a makeshift auto-da-fe, the attempts are going to be vain, because America is too strapping and muscular to be hurt that quickly and easily. Any movement to impair or devalue the eternal idea called America is dwarfed by the tangible supremacy of this idea itself.
This exalted piece is being written in Tbilisi, Georgia, by an American with a Georgian origin. The other day, he accidentally found himself in the capital’s main square. Right in the middle of it there stands the gorgeous shining statue of Saint George killing a dragon, which symbolizes a happy end as we have always known it since our childhood. The strikingly dazzling monument triggered cheerful thoughts about America, which is a great young culture focused on the Happy End in general.
Americans love stories that have a cheery positive finale when a good guy is always a winner, like the Freedom Square Saint George in Tbilisi. The main thoroughfare of the widely practiced happy-end philosophy goes right through the heart of American toughness and morality, which must be a huge helper in handling any crisis that might happen to the well-weathered and tempered-in-conflict American people.
Patience is a great helper too, when we are faced with trouble, and patience needs time to find its way to fairness and restraint. Now we all know finally that racism and colorism, if they dangerously protrude, have the potential to kill America as an idea, and nobody, no sensible being of any color, wants to witness a catastrophe of that magnitude, because the American soul is unique and has only one translucent color. America has always been special because it has always been a baby of all humanity. The only problem that it had, as has become apparent now, was that the baby needed more care and heed on the part of all of us who ever had anything to do with what history has proudly called the United States of America.
By Nugzar B. Ruhadze