In my past life as a city planner I recognized that my profession needed to accept a fundamental core value – change is inevitable, we must plan for it. Easy for me to say but how does change come about? In my opinion Change is effected by one or all of the following factors: consensus, crisis, or leadership. I believe in November the voting public will have come to an agreement that change must occur. So, let me offer you my observations about the catalyst for change.
In my past life as a city planner I recognized that my profession needed to accept a fundamental core value – change is inevitable, we must plan for it. Easy for me to say but how does change come about? In my opinion change is effected by one or all of the following factors: consensus, crisis, or leadership.
I believe in November the voting public will have come to an agreement that change must occur. So, let me offer you my observations about the catalyst for change.
Levels of trust in this country—in our institutions, in our politics, and in one another—are in precipitous decline. And when social trust collapses, nations fail. Can we get it back before it’s too late?
David Brooks opines that America is in a moment of moral convulsion. History has shown us that this is the periodic occurrence in our country. It started with the revolt against the British followed by the transition of the Civil War. The Baby Boomers, now grandparents, have lived through the revolution of the 60s and 70s. 60 years later another revolutionary period has is upon us.
The plethora of social commentators believe that the driving forces for upcoming revolution are disgust with the state of society, Lack of trust for institutions, a deepening sense of moral indignation and rising contempt for established power.
. The foundations of our society began shaking around 2015. White nationalists help bring Donald Trump to power. Young socialists splintered the liberal consensus resulting in the rise of Bernie Sanders and election of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Black activism reemerged in the form of Black Lives Matter; a movement that came to prominence by the killings of Eric Garner, Michael Brown, and Tamir Rice. Our governance lost legitimacy. The tremors of social change grew exponentially. A crisis was now upon us. However, there is no agreement on either approaches or solutions. The country suffers from a catastrophic failure of leadership. The earthquake of change is intensified by the hurricanes of George Floyd’s murder, urban unrest, oversaturation of media influence; followed by the coronavirus pandemic.
The coincidental events flooded our lives and exposing the divides in our society further eroding our trust in social norms.
Now a national election is less than three weeks away. The catalyst of change grind down our emotional stability as we watch our president shredding every norm of decent behavior becoming a plague that sickens every institution he touches., He also undermines the basic credibility of the government. While Trump is the final instrument of this crisis, the conditions that brought him to power and make him so dangerous at this moment were decades in the making. Those conditions will not immediately dissipate with the election of Joe Biden.
Each moment of change will recede eventually, but it is the detritus of the crisis that will remain. Our society then must face the task of removing that debris and replace the broken trust with reformed institutions. That will not be an easy task. Change will come with a fury of conflicting interests. Chaos will result as institutional reforms are being renegotiated. What the endgame will be is beyond my ability to forecast or speculate. But I do know that without authentic leadership and consensus guiding that change our democracy as we used to know it will no longer exist.
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