In Times of National Chaos, Hold onto This

There is a quiet danger more destructive than any foreign enemy or natural disaster.
It is not loud. It does not arrive with sirens.
It settles in slowly.

We become selectively blind, intermittently deaf, and extensively numb.

We go to work. We pay our bills. We argue online. We scroll past headlines that should stop us cold. We assume tomorrow will look roughly like today—because it always has.

Until it doesn’t.

At times, every civilization needs a wake-up call. Not a gentle reminder. A jolt.

For over six decades, I have lived inside a remarkable anomaly: relative stability. I was born in Kentucky and have lived in at least ten American states. Through recessions, wars, political cycles, and social change, the foundation beneath my feet always held.

I used to call that “normal.”
Now I understand it was a privilege.

The word enjoyed carries responsibility. It implies awareness. Gratitude. Vigilance. Because no society – none in history – has been guaranteed permanence.

We cannot know when chaos will become daily reality.
We cannot know when systems fracture, when trust erodes beyond repair, or when survival thinking replaces civic thinking.

But we can recognize when the ground begins to shift.

And it has. Wake up and look!

Our country has entered a tense, unstable, and potentially volatile era. The signs are everywhere: deep division, cultural contempt, institutional distrust, and a growing sense that we are no longer pulling in the same direction.

In moments like this, something profound happens.
We begin to notice what we’ve taken for granted.

Electricity. Order. Peaceful disagreement. The assumption that strangers are not enemies. The invisible social agreements that allow millions of people to coexist without fear.

This is my home.
This is my reality.
This is the life I have enjoyed.

And what I love most about America – what has always made it exceptional – has never been found solely in laws, borders, or systems.

It lives deliberately deeper.

It lives in American Culture.

Not pop culture. Not trends.
But the shared values that emerge when Americans are at their best.

• Personal responsibility
• Freedom paired with accountability
• Voluntary cooperation
• Innovation born of individual dignity
• Mutual aid without coercion
• The belief that tomorrow can be better than today

These are not slogans. They are behaviors.
They are cultural habits passed quietly from generation to generation.

Culture is the most powerful force a society possesses – because it does not require enforcement. It binds naturally. It is a living adhesive, conjoining people, preserving meaning, capturing who we were when no one was watching.

What fascinates us most about history?

Not its rulers.
Not its wars.
Its cultures.

We study how people lived, what they valued, how they treated one another, what they built, and what they left behind.

So here is the question that should haunt all Americans:

What cultural legacy will America leave behind on the record of time?

In chaos, people instinctively unite around survival.
But what if we united around something higher?

What if our common goal was not merely to endure – but to preserve and strengthen the best of who we are?

Our shared American Culture was never a side issue.
It is not symbolic.
It is not optional.

American Culture is the only permanent cure for what ails us.

Policies change. Leaders come and go. Systems evolve or fail.
But culture – shared, lived, and metastatic – outlasts them all.

The power has never been at the extremes.
The power is in the numbers.

When Americans unite around preserving our best cultural qualities, stability returns – not temporarily, but durably. Differences soften. Dialogue re-emerges. Trust rebuilds.

Only when we choose to celebrate our shared American Culture – rather than weaponize our differences – can we rediscover our oneness and offer the world something rare: a free, pluralistic society held together not by force, but by our culturally-shared values.

This is the wake-up call.

Not to fear one another.
Not to retreat into tribes or seek sanctuary.
But to remember who we are when we are at our best.

Because nations do not collapse first from invasion.
They collapse when they forget what holds them together.

And the cure – still within reach – has been with us all along.