SALT LAKE CITY — The year 1968 was one of the most tumultuous in American history.
The United States was enmeshed in the Vietnam War, and anti-war demonstrations swept college campuses. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. Bobby Kennedy was assassinated. Protesters and police clashed at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Tommie Smith and John Carlos bowed their head and raised black-gloved fists at the Olympics. It was an election year.
Utah Sen. Mike Lee wasn’t born until three years later, but recalls studying the things that happened in 1968 in high school, “things that felt strange for our country.”
“Sometimes I’ve thought 2020 feels a little bit like that. We’ve experienced a lot of things at once. The state of our country is different. It’s troubling in many ways,” he said.
“I think we can pull through this. I think we have the ability to pull through it and become stronger in the end. But this is a tough one.”
Lee and Rep. Ben McAdams, Utah’s only Democrat in Congress, recently appeared together at a news conference in Salt Lake City for Lee’s annual Flavors of Utah event. In brief interviews afterward, they talked about the state of the nation amid the COVID-19 pandemic and unrest over racial inequality.
McAdams said Americans are resilient and strong.
“I have all the confidence in our people,” he said. “I’m worried about the direction our government is heading and think Washington is completely broken.”
Washington, he said, is actually at a “full stop” and not headed anywhere, which might be better than going in the wrong direction.
“I’m worried about divisiveness. At the root of everything, we’re all Americans and we have so much more in common than what divides us,” McAdams said. “But everybody seems to be focused on our differences now more than what we have in common.”
A white police officer putting his knee on the neck of a Black man in Minnesota until he died sparked protests about racial disparity across the country, including some that turned violent.
The killing of George Floyd in May came amid the novel coronavirus pandemic, which despite being a public health issue, has become highly politicized.
Resolutions to either situation aren’t readily apparent, and perhaps require contrasting sets of skills when juxtaposed.
“They’re definitely different in that the racial issues deal with the misuse and abuse of government power,” Lee said. “The pandemic is a biologic scientific issue, so in that respect, we have more control over our own destiny when it comes to how we handle government, over how we choose to treat each other, when it comes to how we individually, collectively and through our governments decide to treat people who look differently than we do.”
“We’re much more in control there, and we can solve that one,” he said. “The pandemic, I hope we can solve it. But we may be a little less in control there.”
There are efforts underway and some progress being made every day when it comes to treatments and vaccines for COVID-19 and there are a lot of things out there that hold promise, Lee said.
“We can hope and we can pray and we can invest, and these things we hope and expect can pan out in the coming months,” he said.
McAdams said the pandemic is highlighting the differences that exist in the country.
“When you see how the virus is hitting minority communities harder than average, that just shows that things like access to health care, access to the ability to social distance jobs that you can do at home, aren’t evenly distributed across our country,” he said.
Lee said the racial divide is a tough issue, and one the country needs to grapple with.
“It’s emblematic of a broader set of issues that we have to address in terms of the proper role of government and how government power is wielded, what government power is,” he said.
Government, Lee said, is just the official collective use of force, though it’s needed and shouldn’t be feared in every circumstance.
“But like fire or water or any of a number of other things that are necessary, it has to be managed carefully,” he said. “And when we mismanage it, when we allow it to operate out of control, people get hurt and people sometimes die.”
McAdams said it’s important to see that the divide is real.
“I think that we have to recognize that opportunities aren’t spread equally,” he said.
“Everyone has a different lived experience. I’m grateful for the life that I have and the life I’m giving to my kids, but I also recognize that we have opportunities that not everybody experiences,” McAdams said. “I want to live in a country where every American enjoys the same opportunities I’m hoping to provide for my kids.”
