Americana Is What We Yearn For, Will We Get There Again?

Textbooks and television can’t bring us a great vision right now in America. No matter the commercials we may see about how we are coming back as a country, it will never truly help us achieve Americana. And maybe that’s ok. Maybe as we scroll our phones a dose of reality this week is what we needed.

In just one week, our television showed Matthew McConaughey totally break break his ‘alright, alright, alright’ persona and just be real and emotive at the White House about the Uvalde shooting aftermath and can-kicking down the road mentality our Senate has. This same week, the big networks showed us the horror of January 6th in an effort to find answers. We did not have ‘Americana’ feelings the first full week of summer 2022 on our television this week.

Today, I thought about the 1950s. From the archives, it seemed the 1950s presented The American Dream to gloss over the real issues of the day by presenting the television audience of the time with Americana.

And why not present a tired nation with positive vibes! After all, The 40s was war-torn until victory was reached between ’44 and ’45. The Great Depression was just a decade earlier in the 30s while Herbert Hoover went fishing.

The last great decade up until the 1950’s was the Roaring ’20s. Both decades featured incredible music, the bandstand eta in fact , as well as the white-picket home and family. The Leave it to Beaver eras if you will. At least that is what the textbooks tell us and really old footage show us.

I thought for sure we would undergo a resurgent Roaring 2020s the rest of this decade , but to achieve that we must , WE MUST, wrong the rights, which includes balanced reporting on our television screens .

I’ll be the first one to say thank God for sports that distract us the best they can, but pragmatically our focus has to be on figuring out how to make a difference . How to make a CHANGE for this country to move forward. That change-making mentality can help us receive Americana again. It’s why I wish media outlets would truly zone in on why San Francisco recalling their ultra progressive DA is a change-making moment.

To truly achieve Americana again , our focus has to be on the bad shit that goes on and call for correction. We must also have a celebration of big moments that even an election in a city like San Francisco can ring in around the country.

Recalling us back to Americana? What a thought!