Gorbachev and Changes

Isn’t it paradoxical that while the Soviet Union opens up and faces its problems forthrightly, here in the United States we blunder on like Alice in Wonderland? While Mikhail Gorbachev admits that Afghanistan and Czechoslovakia were “mistakes,” I have yet to hear a U.S. President admit that Vietnam was a mistake. While Gorbachev struggles to confront a deteriorating economy, we in the U.S. spout cheery platitudes as Japan overtakes us economically. Gorbachev forces his people to make tough decisions and we applaud. Yet, Presidents Bush and Reagan assure America that everything will be all right if we’ll just “believe,” and Japan marches past us.

Perhaps if we were as able to contain our conservatives as well as Gorbachev does his, the United States might be able to get itself back on the road to economic health.

Flags and school prayer won’t help us as long as we elect men to government who fear change in this country every bit as much as the conservatives in Eastern Europe feared change in theirs. And grand words won’t help us until a President comes along who will force Americans to look realistically at the problems facing them.

What we need is a President who will make us look past the billowing flag to the rusty machinery it masks. We do not need to keep our heads in the sand. The view may be temporarily comforting, but to the hungry lions looking at us from behind, the view must look tempting indeed.

MICHAEL FULLINGSTEAD

Los Angeles