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Ishaan Busireddy
In his op-ed titled “When America seemed divided beyond repair, something great came out of it,” John Avlon explains why there is no such thing as “ a perfect time in American history”. He begins by comparing the U.S.A. from decades ago to the U.S.A. of today. For example, Avlon points out that Americans reached the moon within a decade of JFK’s announcement, and that in the present day, it can take longer for bridges to be constructed. Also, Avlon adds that at around the same time as the moon landing, in the 1960’s, America went through an influential musical revolution, and had a booming economy.
Even though these achievements made that decade seem like a perfect time, Avlon begs to differ with the statement, “But if you talked to folks on the streets of America 50 years ago, it did not necessarily seem like we were going through a glory period guided by the greatest generation.” Avlon supports this claim by stating that one year after the assassinations of M.L.K. Jr. and R.F.K., murders in the U.S.A. were at an all-time high, and American cities experienced riots, fires, and bombings. These horrible incidents staining the 1960’s, the decade of achievement, display that even through national progress, division between people is still present. Avlon even goes far enough to say that commentators at the time compared this division to that of the American Civil War. On the Civil War, Avlon contrasts the death of 700K Americans, with the freeing of 4 million slaves. Continuing with the pattern of “with good comes bad,” our “greatest president” Abraham Lincoln was followed by “two of our worst,” James Buchanan and Andrew Johnson. All of Avlon’s examples clearly show that “There is no perfect time in American history to harken back to.”
In my opinion, Avlon’s argument that no period of American history was perfect is quite reasonable. At the end of the Civil War, there were two outcomes--one good, one bad. The somewhat-freedom of four million slaves was achieved at the expense of the lives of 700K Americans. During the 1960’s, the U.S.A. became the first nation to reach the moon, and had an incredible economy. That success occurred as the cities of America burned with fires, riots and bombings. Finally, the Cold War was marked with the U.S.A.’s rise as a world power, but also had America lose a war for the first and only time. In conclusion, I agree with Avlon that throughout American history, there was never an entirely perfect time.
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