A friend of mine recently said this:

America used to be about making sure everyone did better. It’s the loss of that ethos that has spawned an every man for himself viewpoint. It makes me feel beyond sad.

Very well said. I have since translated it to a much simpler:

America used to be about helping other people instead of “I’m gonna get mine”.

Something happened tonight that served as a reminder of just how low we’ve sunk. It’s relatively small in the grand scheme of things, but it’s illustrative nonetheless.

There is a restaurant whose parking lot is across an (admittedly) busy street. There is a crosswalk that pedestrians line up at, for which cars are supposed to stop (on both sides) to allow them to cross. Each direction has two lanes.

Because I am a nice person, and I follow actual road rules, I stopped to allow a line of pedestrians to cross. And yet, the cars, one by one, in the lane to the right of me, just kept going through. Not a care in the world. And I would have thought that if they saw me stop, they’d be reticent to just fly through. What’s the thing we’re always taught by our parents? Drive defensively? Apparently, I was wrong.

It got to the point where the line behind me had started going around me. And even the guy right behind me went around, only to turn and look at me (and give me another gesture) as he drove by because I hadn’t gone through with the other cars. (We’re going to ignore the fact that while he was looking at me, he was not looking at the crosswalk that might have contained pedestrians had they been walking.)

And I, having the temper that I do, flipped out a little and sped up to get beside him at the light not 200 yards ahead of that crosswalk. I just waited for him to look over at me. He never did. Why? Because he never looked up from his phone.

Sigh.

Where did our attention go? Where did being nice go? Where did looking out for our fellow man go? Hell, where did having some semblance of awareness to maybe understand why I had stopped there and taking a breath and asking yourself “shouldn’t I want to stop as well?” Isn’t that the right thing to do?

We have become selfish. And self-involved. And fixated on always looking out for #1, no matter the cost or harm to others.

It sickens me.

I have been searching for the “why” and “how” coming out of the recent election. A small part of that question was answered tonight.