风萧萧_Frank
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William Moloney坚韧不拔的美国人仍然充满希望，决心重新过上好日子
威廉·莫洛尼，观点撰稿人 - 20 年 11 月 26 日
在大萧条最严重的时候，富兰克林·罗斯福用一句名言“我们唯一需要恐惧的就是恐惧本身”来团结他的同胞。他说得多么正确，这些话对今天的美国人产生了多大的共鸣，近一年来，由于新型冠状病毒这个看不见的敌人，美国人一直生活在恐惧的氛围中。
那么，当我们准备庆祝最具美国特色的节日感恩节时，我们能对这个国家的心态说些什么呢？
美国人是一个惊人的坚韧和天生乐观的民族。尽管封锁造成了巨大的社会和经济损失，但大多数人都相信他们和他们的国家将以某种方式度过这场危机。尽管如此，人们对各级领导层深感不信任，从总统到州长再到市长，尽管各州的情况各不相同。
人们对有关病毒及其应对方法的信息不足且往往相互矛盾感到非常不满。人们明白“病例”、“住院”和“死亡”之间的区别，但人们普遍怀疑媒体和政府都喜欢关注“病例”，因为“病例”提供的数字更大、更可怕，有助于支持封锁的说法，而其他两个类别则没有。
人们几乎普遍对政客们感到愤怒，他们向普通公民施加了严重的扼杀就业的限制，而自己却免于制裁，人们也越来越意识到这场流行病如何大大加剧了收入不平等。
感恩节前一周，美国疾病控制与预防中心 (CDC) “强烈建议”美国人在感恩节假期期间不要出行，因为最近新冠病例激增，这无疑不利于全国的情绪。同一份咨询报告还说，任何未在家庭中呆过 14 天的人都不应成为晚宴的客人。这是否意味着要取消邀请休假在家的祖母或海军陆战队儿子？
总体而言，美国人感觉到，封锁制度对教堂比对赌场更严厉，而且相当随意地侵入人类生活的最私密方面，这并不合他们的心意。基层的公民抗命并非遥不可及。
然而，我们有充分的理由认为，这种可怕的情况不一定会发生。这位作家年纪够大，他还记得 1968 年可怕的分裂和灾难，也清楚地记得洛杉矶那个凄冷的夜晚，几分钟之内，罗伯特·肯尼迪躺在大使酒店厨房的血泊中，喜极而泣，却变成了绝望的泪水。那一刻，我们许多“年轻理想主义者”感到美国的希望已经破灭。
但我们错了。凭借美国人特有的坚韧，我们和这个国家继续生活。这并不总是罗纳德·里根的《美国的早晨》中所捕捉到的那种情绪，但好日子比坏日子多得多——有些日子真的很美好。
美国人从来不相信，也永远不会相信，他们的国家是一个可怕的国家，有着可怕的过去，正如一些人所说的那样。我们知道，美国是一个非凡的国家——不仅因为它拥有令人惊叹的美丽、巨大的机遇和善良的人民，还因为我们决心永不放弃我们的先辈为之奋斗和牺牲的自由。
最近，当我看到壮丽的落日从雄伟的落基山脉背后缓缓落下时，我被米兹·盖纳 (Mitzi Gaynor) 的歌声所感染，她演唱了《南太平洋》中的《斜眼乐观主义者》(Cock-Eyed Optimist)，这首歌的开头是“我听说人类正在走向衰落，而且已经不远了”，结尾是“但我像个傻瓜一样被一种叫做希望的东西困住了，我无法把它从我的心里赶走，这颗心里没有。”
当各行各业的美国人与他们关心的人一起坐下来吃感恩节晚餐时，我相信绝大多数人也会感受到那种叫做希望的东西。
威廉·莫洛尼 (William Moloney) 博士是科罗拉多基督教大学百年研究所的保守思想研究员，曾在牛津大学和伦敦大学学习。他曾任科罗拉多州教育专员。
Resilient Americans remain hopeful and determined to reclaim their lives
BY WILLIAM MOLONEY, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR - 11/26/20
In the depths of the Great Depression, Franklin Roosevelt rallied his countrymen by famously stating that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” How right he was, and how those words resonate for Americans today who, for nearly a year, have lived in a climate of fear owing to the unseen enemy of a novel coronavirus.
So, what can we say about the national state of mind as we prepare to celebrate that most American of all holidays, Thanksgiving?
Americans are an amazingly resilient and naturally optimistic people. Despite the massive social and economic damage caused by the lockdowns, most people are confident that they and their country will somehow get through this crisis. Nonetheless, there is a deep distrust of the leadership being provided at every level, from the president to governors to mayors, albeit with wide variations from state to state.
There is great dissatisfaction about the inadequate, and often contradictory, information about the virus and how to deal with it. People understand the difference among “cases,” “hospitalizations” and “deaths,” but there is widespread suspicion that the media and government alike prefer focusing on “cases,” which offer bigger, scarier numbers useful for supporting the lockdown narrative while the other two categories do not.
There is nearly universal anger over politicians who impose severe job-killing restrictions on ordinary citizens while exempting themselves, and also growing consciousness of how the pandemic has greatly exacerbated income inequality.
The national mood surely was not helped when, just a week before Thanksgiving, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) “strongly recommended” that Americans not travel during the Thanksgiving holiday because of recent spikes in COVID-19 cases. The same advisory said that no one who has not been part of the household for 14 days should be a dinner guest. Would this mean disinviting your grandmother or your Marine son who is home on leave?
Overall, Americans are sensing that a lockdown regime that is tougher on churches than on casinos, and quite comfortable intruding into the most private aspects of human life, is not to their liking. Civil disobedience at the grassroots level is not far-fetched.
Yet there is good reason to think that such dire scenarios need not come to pass. This writer is old enough to remember the horrific divisiveness and calamities of 1968, and to vividly recall that bleak night in Los Angeles when in the space of minutes, tears of joy turned to tears of despair as an unseeing Robert Kennedy lay in a pool of his own blood on the kitchen floor of the Ambassador Hotel. Many of us “young idealists,” in that moment, felt hope for America had been extinguished.
But we were wrong. With characteristic American resilience, we and the country pushed ahead with living. It wasn’t always the mood captured in Ronald Reagan’s “Morning in America,” but the good days were much more numerous than the bad — and some were truly grand.
Americans never have believed, and never will, that theirs is a terrible country with a terrible past, as some suggest. We know that America is an exceptional country — not just because of its awesome beauty, vast opportunity and fundamentally decent people, but also because of our determination never to give up those liberties our forebears fought and died to attain and protect.
As I recently watched a glorious sunset slipping behind the majestic Rocky Mountains, my reverie was enhanced by the voice of the delightful Mitzi Gaynor singing “Cock-Eyed Optimist” from “South Pacific,” which begins, “I hear the human race is falling on its face and hasn’t very far to go,” and ends, “But I’m stuck like a dope with a thing called hope, and I can’t get it out of my heart, not this heart.”
As Americans from all walks of life sit down for Thanksgiving dinner with those they care about, I am confident the great majority also will feel that thing called hope.
William Moloney, Ph.D., is a Fellow in Conservative Thought at Colorado Christian University’s Centennial Institute who studied at Oxford and the University of London. He is a former Colorado Commissioner of Education.
