When Pittsburgh Mayor Sophie Masloff was asked if she was going to run for reelection in 1993, she said, “I don’t have any ambitions for myself. I just have dreams for my children and grandchildren.” Sophie was then in her mid-70s, and she was ready to let younger people take a turn at being mayor.
In a town that reveres grandmas, bubbies and nonnas, Sophie had been OK with being Pittsburgh’s “grandma mayor.” She served the public with that grandmotherly combination of toughness and kindness.
Sophie was a “New Deal” David L. Lawrence progressive Democrat, and she was a fiscal conservative, too. That was because she didn’t want to stick future generations with the bills from her generation. As one aide joked at the time, “She spends city money like it’s her own. And she doesn’t spend her own much.”
Many Americans wonder what kind of world we are now passing on to our children.
When Donald Trump was still able to get elected after his lewd comments to the “Access Hollywood” host in 2016, much public discourse became trash talk. For years he had insulted war heroes, the disabled and minorities, taking especially crude aim at women reporters who dared ask him uncomfortable questions.
His message was disturbing but clear: If the president can talk like that, everyone can talk like that, including our kids. Many believe this has debased our personal relationships and discouraged public engagement. Unfortunately, many good people have simply tuned out, which carries its own danger.
So far, the national debt has been increased by $12 trillion during Trump’s years in the White House. Trump’s recent promise to pay every American $5,000 if they successfully support his candidates in the midterm elections — socialism at best and bribery at worst — would add another trillion-plus to the national debt.
And Trump’s wild spending on his vanity projects is a daily punch to the gut of those Americans who are struggling to buy groceries, pay the mortgage and utility bills, and fill their tanks so they can get to work.
From a White House ballroom that he promised would cost us nothing to a vulgar triumphal arch that would block the solemn view of Arlington National Cemetery, the bills will fall on our children long after we are gone.
And the truth? Forget about the truth. Here’s just one example: Trump has repeatedly declared victory in his self-declared war with Iran, only to announce again and again that he is launching new attacks on Iran in order to finally defeat them.
Most of us remember the great American story of 6-year-old George Washington who had damaged his father’s cherry tree with his new hatchet. “I cannot tell a lie. … I did cut it with my hatchet,” George told his father. And his father said that George’s honesty was worth more than a thousand trees.
The original Americans had a way out of this kind of morass. The Iroquois Confederacy believed in the Seven Generations Principle as part of the Great Law of Peace that is a thousand years old and may have been used by Benjamin Franklin to influence the United States Constitution.
According to the Iroquois, we must consider how all big decisions will affect those who follow us seven generations into the future. Like Sophie Masloff, we can start with our children and grandchildren.
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