Service
Amid the interpretive turbulence of Donald Trump’s victory, one of the more salient questions I asked was, I believe, by David Axelrod to J.D. Vance.
J.D. has a peculiar and impressive background, to an upper-middle-class guy like myself: grew up in the Rust Belt, had an opioid addicted mother, joined the Marine Corps, put himself through Ohio State and Yale Law. The list goes on. But what stuck out to me was Axelrod’s questioning whether, after Vance lauded the effects the Marine Corps had on his maturation, national service should be mandatory. Axelrod posed the question in contrast with the dying out of the Greatest/Silent Generations. Vance straddled the fence a bit, articulating convincingly both sides of the argument; but the question of service and societal connectivity is something that’s weighed on me the past few months.
After Trump’s victory, one of the small reminders I had that I wasn’t doing enough as a citizen to bridge the gaps we had was that I had zero -- zero -- Trump supporters as Facebook friends, or who were at least willing to publicly express their support for him. I could argue that that’s no big, but there’s something disconcerting about not having within my social hemisphere some folks willing to give the guy a chance, see the tones of validity in the movement he helped foment. It’s a pretty extraordinary challenge to do so, of course, when the fomenter of said movement is a loudmouthed bigoted narcissist, but the way Vance describes his family/people -- and how he articulates their reason for voting for Trump -- is really worth your time.
But I’m veering from my point.
I fear that without that sense of connection to people like Vance, those whose ambitions and values were -- if not antithetical -- quite different from mine, will continue to burned, and that we as a society will continue to burn ourselves. I’ve wondered whether mandatory national service is a broad, potentially effective solution for bridging that gap. Frankly, I don’t have that answer. And as someone who chose not to serve in the military out of high school/college, it’s arguable that I’m a serious part of the problem.
Going forward, I’ll be interested to see how the resistance movements to Trump organize to reclaim power. I’ll be fascinated to see the legislative agenda they craft. But I’ll be just as curious to see how inclusive they’ll be in their approach. For all the cries of resistance we’re hearing right now, I’m hoping too to hear cries of inclusiveness and organization. A feeling of connectivity could very well be an antidote to the socio-economic/cultural isolation we feel in today’s America. The remedy to that isolation, however, has yet to be properly legislated.
Here’s a link to Vance’s interview: http://podcast.cnn.com/the-axe-files-david-axelrod/episode/all/E8cHfQthxc1GOD/u7sljl.html. Give it a listen, if you’re curious.
