On Open Letter to Mr. Dingman

Dear Mr. Dingman,

I made a little stir a couple years ago when I wrote a letter to your wife. Sorry if that made it to your dinner table and caused any stress. Also, I addressed her by her first name but I know that your brother was the vice principal and I can only remember one of your first names so I'd hate to address the wrong one. Double-also I know your brother was the VP because I visited his office after I pantsed Dan Butters in gym class.  

Anyway, this time I’ve come back for you but the tone is going to be very different.

You were my history teach in 7^th grade. While that's a formative time in a human’s life I didn’t necessarily expect to retain a lot of what I learned because, well, it was 7^th grade history. However, you said something that has stuck with me forever.

This is a crude drawing of the lesson. You challenged us to look at this undulating wave with its crests and troughs and determine what it represented. We probably should've guessed what it represented by thinking about where we were, but we were largely stumped.

It’s history. The lesson you imparted on us was that history repeats itself – “it’s a dynastic cycle” was the way you said it.

Then you pointed an arrow to that (poorly drawn) X and said, “now what’s this?”

After a moment or two of confusion the answer was revealed: That’s us. That’s the USA. Pundits were saying that we had started our descent. We were still pretty close to on top of the world, but there was a growing concern that we were looking over the precipice into the unknown.

This terrified me the first time I heard it in the fall of 1999. When I had you again in 8th grade history you presented it again and it struck me again (although this time I probably answered the questions correctly…or maybe I didn’t say anything because I wanted to let others figure it out). How could this be? How could we be starting our decline? How would it affect my day to day life – would it change anything? Is being near the top still good enough to feel OK?

Mr. D, as of November 9, 2016 I feel with all my heart that you were right. We’re inching down that decline. It may not be as simple as anti-Trump rhetoric (to which I contribute, but only so far as presenting facts and genuine disbelief like the fact that a guy who had his Twitter account taken away by his staff is now one of the most powerful men in the world) suggests – the world won’t cease to exist on November 10^th. However, incremental change is generally seen as a good thing. What has happened in the USA over the past 10 years would be hard-pressed to be called "incremental change." It's been more like a one step forward, two steps back situation.

To your visual metaphor, the USA had gained its footing and was holding steady near the top of the hill...but the foothold gave way and now we’ve stumbled down a little bit.

Beyond just saying things about how I’m upset that people care more about emails than they do about sexism, racism, homophobia, sexual assault, and emails (we didn’t seem to talk about how Trump destroyed thousands of incriminating emails while he was being investigated by the government – how strange!), there’s more to talk about. The USA has acted as world leaders since sometime between World Wars I and II. We’ve established military bases around the world to fight the good fight at a moment’s notice. We’ve brokered trade deals with countries on each continent. We’ve created a popular culture that the rest of the world feeds off of.

In one election cycle, we’ve taken away huge swaths of that. By and large the world is laughing at us. President Trump (first time I’ve typed that and boy did it feel strange) has put his focus on internal affairs (not that he’s ever given details of any of the plans he might have) which have suggested reneging on numerous trade agreements and disavowing international alliances. In short, destroying the goodwill it took decades to build.

I don’t know what’s next. It sure feels like the ball has started rolling down the hill. There are two vastly different swaths of people living in this country. The maps of the election results very clearly show – almost uniformly –that people living in cities vote one way and people living in rural areas vote the other way. It’s uncanny. It's scary. I don’t have a solution to this. This is a frightening disconnect.

I want to tell my wife it will be OK. I want to believe that Congress will stop some of his insane ideas from coming to fruition. I want to believe that I will be comfortable enough in this country to have children in a couple of years and feel like they’re in a world that’s safe for them.

But then I look at that slope again and wonder.

I hope you're doing well, Mr. D, and I'm glad to report that a couple of your lessons had lasting power.

Take care of yourself - the world can be a scary place,

Kevin Nye