This story is part of America @ 250: The Questions Before Us, a series from IPM News and the Illinois Student Newsroom.
CHAMPAIGN — A birthday is a time for celebration and reflection: Where have we been? Where are we right now? And where are we going?
IPM is celebrating America’s 250th birthday by inviting people from across east-central Illinois to share what they think are the most important questions facing Americans at this historic moment.
Alex Wysocki is a television producer, filmmaker, husband and father of three. He and his wife Abigail moved to Champaign during the COVID-19 pandemic and are raising their family here.
The following transcript has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
When I think about what America is, I think about it’s the only country that’s ever been founded on a good idea.
You know, it starts with we the people. It’s not about the ruling class. It really was about an egalitarian reboot of Western civilization and it was about giving opportunities to people that historically never had them. I mean, that’s the American dream, right? That you could come from nothing and through, energy and through dedication and community, you can really build something that you would have not had otherwise.
I grew up in the, in the 80s and I was a child of the 90s. And I think we really got to see this country and one of the most explosive phases of growth that we’ve ever seen. You know, things were good. And I think the reason that they were good was because of the huge investment that the previous generation made, and that thing you heard all the time of, we want to give our kids a better life than we had. there were sacrifices that were made.
There were future investments that were made. I remember the Earth Day campaigns that said, like, you’re planting a tree not because you want a tree today, but because you want a tree in 20 years. It was an idea of building something larger than yourself. And it was an idea of looking down the road and thinking, where do we want to be? Not just what do we want now?
And I see the country really at an inflection point right now where we’re choosing short term gain versus long term good. And people mortgaging their future for a short-term victory right now.
And I mean, from like the predatory payday loans of, “Hey, you want you want to get a fancy new car. Now, how would you get a loan against the next 20 paychecks you’re going to get?”
Or during the 2008 mortgage crisis when banks allowed people to take out credit way beyond their means. We’re seeing that now politically.
I fear that bad practices, government overreach, disregard for basic constitutional principles, a life where you’re not worried that if you anger the wrong person, that they can send soldiers to your house and escort you to jail. You can speak freely. You can have religious beliefs independent of the state. The government can’t come in and just deprive you of property and life and freedom just because they feel like it in the moment.
I mean, we take those things for granted now because we’ve grown up through a beautiful era of, some of the most peace and prosperity that, that humankind has ever known. And, and we really, I think, view that as, as a given. And I think every day is being slowly and slowly and slowly eroded. And if people do not step up and make a course correction on that, in the future we’re going to be in a bad place and we’re going to wake up one day and say, how did we get here? A lot like the frog being in water. And you turn up the heat slowly, and the frog doesn’t jump out because it doesn’t notice the water is getting hotter.
We have the oldest constitution in the world. Now, why is that? Why did it last that long? Well, it lasted that long because it was more than just a piece of paper. It embodied a whole sense of values
And it’s really hard to foresee major and catastrophic change in any direction. Because people feel like no matter what happens, they’re still going to go to their job, they’re still going to have Walmart, they’re still going to be able to put Netflix on, their kids are still going to have food. Electricity is going to go on. But any collapse that the US has in constitutional values and constitutional freedoms will be slow. And once it happens, once we’ve lost these basic freedoms to an idea of fascism and totalitarianism, you do not make up that ground.
So, as Americans, the question before us is our short term political gains worth giving up the big picture of America?
If you have an idea for the America @ 250 series or would like to be featured in an upcoming story, contact Charles “Stretch” Ledford at stretch@illinois.edu.