The End of an Era in America: We Shall Overcome

The End of an Era in America: We Shall Overcome

March 16, 2025

Terry M Pace, PhD

“An era can be said to end when its basic illusions are exhausted” - Arthur Miller

The great 20th century American playwright, Arthur Miller was primarily speaking of the end to the post WWII years with this quote in 1949. Miller is one of America’s greatest playwrights and had a string of hit plays that dominated the late 1940’s and the 1950’s. In most of his plays such as All My Sons, Crucible, A View from a Bridge and Death of a Salesman, Miller shatters illusions and elucidates heartbreaking themes of loss and the ending of dreams (I just reread these plays, and they are brilliant). His writing brought to life relatable ordinary American men and women struggling to make sense of the changing times in post war America, when so much had been lost and so much of the prewar world was vanishing. While aspects of America was filled with the joys of “Happy Days”, much more was learning to live without loved ones lost in the war; the new Cold War with a nuclear armed and belligerent Soviet Union; the threat of communism and dictatorship growing around the world; McCarthyism and the Red Scare at home with persecution of people who simply had more liberal or critical views; the Korean War and the looming threat of the eventual 20 year war in Vietnam.

There were also vast cultural and technological changes impacting society such as civil rights and integration, the changing roles of women who left the home and also worked to win the war; the beatniks then the hippies, Jazz, Rock and Roll and R&B music becoming mainstream, TV everywhere, beaming into the homes of rich and poor, urban and rural alike, the Russian satellite, Sputnik launching the space race, and the prominence of jet airline travel across the country and around the world. Clearly the 1950’s were a transitional time and the ending of an era. The world became more open, liberal, cosmopolitan, available, connected, unavoidable, expressive, compassionate and chaotic after these times. Yet, one thing dominates, permeates all of America and its people in Arthur Miller’s plays: the want for, the need for, the unquestioned, inexhaustible work for money. He strips apart our private lives and reveals how American capitalism leaves us all empty, corrupt, divided in the end. We live to work and do not work to live. And with this incessant material striving we measure human worth by money, shift, pride and greed. America in all its goodness has almost always got this one basic precept of wisdom wrong throughout our history.

As Miller says in the Crucible, a play about the Salem Witch trials in the Massachusetts colony in 1692-93:

“We are what we always were in Salem, but now the little crazy children are jangling the keys of the kingdom, and common vengeance writes the law!”

We are now in a time of vast transition and endings. Like postwar America, social and technological changes abound and have challenged and often consumed our lives. There is great stress and loss in these changes, just as there are new freedoms and gains. But the old world collides with the new. Confusion abounds and demigods arise all around promising they can squelch our fears or make us rich like them. We are bombarded with ideologies and threats. Reason and empathy the two grounds to civilization are viewed by the demigods as outdated and ineffective and caring thoughtful efforts are belittled. The old America I have known for almost 70 years is crumbling and is no more. I see the slogan America First for what it is, it means Me First, but not really me or you, but only the rich are included. And now indeed, “the little crazy children are jangling the keys of the kingdom, and common vengeance writes the law!” I mourn and I fear but I am not defeated!

I felt my America trembling in pain when a presidential candidate and future president mocked a well-known reporter with a physical disability on national TV and he was not immediately rejected by all parties as a viable candidate. For me that was already a bridge too far. But then, my America ended when a sitting president staged a violent insurrection on our nation’s capital and never faced justice. It ended when we elected a convicted rapist and 34-time felon who interfered in an election and committed business fraud. It ended when we reelected a president whose inaction due to pride, selfishness and an anti-science worldview let 500,000 Americans die from the COVID pandemic.

It ended when a president appointed loyalists to leadership rather than people of character, experience and a belief in the constitution. It ended when the free press is criticized, threatened, bought off, silenced and excluded. Criticism and transparency are backbones of true democracy. It ended when the independent justice department is taken over by the president for his own political persecutions and coverups. It ended when healthcare is threatened and cut, and public education and science are deprived of necessary resources and freedoms. It ended when the richest person in the world was given power unconfirmed by the congress to act over a new illegitimate government program to take lifesaving food and medicine from the poorest people in America and around the world. It ended when empathy and civil rights are mocked as some sort of weakness rather than the glue that makes a truly civilized world possible. It ended when immigrants and GLBTQ+ Americans are viewed as inhuman and as not having equal civil rights. Which is as biologically, scientifically silly as saying blue eyed people should have no rights and should be banished from public view.

My America ended when the president attacked our two closest allies, our good neighbors and friends in Canada and Mexico and has threatened the sovereignty of their nations. It ended when the president took the side of our enemies and favored Russia as innocent in their brutal and unprovoked attack on free and democratic Ukraine. It ended when the president expressed an intention to remove the people of Gaza in an act of genocide in order to build a beach, golf and gambling resort on their homeland, complete with a golden idol statue of he who I cannot name. It ended when the orange man acting as president invoked an over 200-year-old law in order to deport immigrants without civil rights or due process of the law, when there is clearly no wartime threat from immigrants other than in the racist paranoid eyes of hatred.

My America ended in Charlottesville when the president called white nationalists chanting Nazi slogans and carrying torches “very fine people.” It ended when after literally rigging the supreme court and packing it with orange loyalists, they took away a long cherished established civil right for a woman to choose her own healthcare decisions about her own body. It ended when massive tax cuts benefited the wealthy and allowed large corporations to pay little to no taxes despite record profits from the people. It ended when a president sold golden shoes, self-images, and even signed and nationalist appended bibles to raise money, leaving nothing sacred or off limits from profiteering. It ended when the president sold cars from the White House for the richest man in the world.

My America, the one I grew up in and have loved all my nearly 70 years of life ended when the president mocked the world calling himself the king of America and stating he can have no law above him as long as he believes he is acting in the best interests of the country. But I have read and just reread one of our most important founders, Thomas Paine. In his book “Common Sense” he directly says, “In America the law is king". Americans who use to have common sense need to also read Thomas Paine anew!

As I wrote about in fall 2024 before the election, we now seem on the eve of destruction. I’m not really shocked, this is how I thought things would go. I sensed an angry, greedy, fearful hatred in America and in much of evangelical American Christianity. An Old Testament sort of disgust with humanity and a want, even a glee in the hope for oppression, removal, destruction without mercy, a blind fear filled rage toward everything not understood or aligned with narrow experiences and self protection. A shrunken America denouncing our courageous Declaration of Independence, our humane and revolutionary constitution, the visions of our greatest leaders such as President Lincoln and Martin Luther King, Jr, and ignoring true religion of the heart as told by Jesus Christ himself.

I’ve been fighting against this time, from when I foresaw this day in 2015 as an orange pampered billionaire reality TV game show host got off his golden toilet and put on his corporate blue suit and red tie, complete with his MAGA cap and descended down his golden Manhattan elevator in a tower bearing his name to announce his first candidacy. A wealthy, slick, devilish, lying man with no character or qualifications to lead this grand and diverse democracy. Yet, a man with an ideology, money, and a will to win at all costs. A man who unlike other presidents, saw the fear and frustrations in Americans that could be manipulated. He did not see in America a shining city on a hill, a beacon of goodness and freedom for the world like Ronald Reagan. He did not see in America a land of hope like Barack Obama. He did not see himself as being responsible for his actions like President Harry S. Truman or ones who sought the greater collective social good for ordinary Americans like presidents Franklin Delano Roosevelt or Dwight Eisenhower, a democrat and a republican! Fortunately, we have had these and other great leaders in our history who have taught us much about what matters most. One thing that many Americans do not seem to understand is that an oligarchic presidency, ruling by a rich, powerful and corrupt executive branch is in effect the same thing as communism. Ownership is with the rich who are all statesmen even if not always by name or official oversight and 80% of the people are truly dependent economically and socially. FDR saw this in 1938 as the communists and fascist took over much of the world. In a speech to congress he said:

“The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is Fascism—ownership of Government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power.”

So now, a new era must begin. With the inspiration of our greatest leaders and the decency and freedom of heart and mind in our people, we will resist. We will return a democracy with checks and balances, a free critical press, a public education system and a universal healthcare system second to none. Investing in our people is always an investment with the greatest returns, not only for our economy, but for our very souls. Truth, freedom, justice, empathy and service to others will once again reign in the land. We will find a way to bring back the belief of President John F Kennedy to “ask not what the country can do for you, but what you can do for your country”. And the belief of perhaps our greatest president Abraham Lincoln:

“That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

I believe many deep faiths, separate from government, free and tolerant, concerned with alleviating suffering and injustice for all and focused on changing one’s own heart in goodness and wisdom, according to each one’s conscience will also bloom from the new spring of American revitalization. And that we will once more stand against dictators, tyrants and those that violate established international norms and human decency. And finally, we will be true and trustworthy to our allies and friends around the world. This is how America has prospered before. This is how we will prosper again. So, sadly, painfully, an era has ended, my old America and the illusions I once had are no more, but with millions of Americans, and millions of our friends around the world, the people will yet overcome!

Cover photo credited to Scott McGraw shared on Facebook of Kansas Tallgrass Prairie Preserve. Beautiful America. All comments are strictly my own.