Growing up in Ghana, my imagination of life in America was fueled by the pictures my parents took and the stories they told about their own experiences here.
For my dad, it was the three-month business trip he took to Los Angeles in 1989. In my mom’s case, she spent her senior year of high school as an exchange student in Sherman, New York. Their experiences, coupled with what I saw in movies and TV shows, gave me an impression of America that was equal parts wonder and naïveté.
When I finally came to America in 2003, that wonder collided with reality and left me feeling slightly perplexed. Now, don’t get me wrong; Los Angeles was comparatively the most beautiful place I had ever been. However, it was not the utopia my imagination had traveled to for so many years. On the ride from the airport to my first apartment in Downey, California, I was surprised to see litter on the freeway and on some neighborhood streets — but that was just the beginning.
Over the next few days, I was even more astounded to learn that many of the people pushing shopping carts full of clothes and other belongings were homeless. Some slept on park benches, sidewalks, or in tents along the street. Others stayed in shelters for the night and were back on the streets during the day. On various freeway off ramps, it was not uncommon to see a panhandler or two asking for spare change. Some local parks were overrun by vagrants and drug users. Others were left in deplorable conditions, rendering them unusable for their intended purposes. But this was America, the country I believed was the greatest on earth. For a country with such vast resources, how was it possible that poverty, homelessness, panhandling, and all their underlying and accompanying issues were not solved here?
Nearly two decades later, many of the problems I encountered when I arrived on these shores continue to persist, not only in Los Angeles, but in cities, towns, and suburbs all around the country. In many instances, they are getting much worse with no end in sight. The profound damage being done to the human condition as a result is irresponsible and tragic to say the least. As an immigrant, it breaks my heart to see this happening with reckless abandon in the place I have come to call my home.
I believe the world needs an America that lives up to its destiny as the shining city on the hill, to which the “tired, poor and huddled masses” can once again “yearn to breathe free.” If we believe our principles, values, and Constitution provide the best opportunity for human flourishing, we must exemplify those outcomes in our cities and in the lives of our fellow citizens.
Hence, a return to a semblance of sanity must inevitably begin with an acknowledgement of why we are here in the first place. In analyzing this issue for many years, I discovered an unequivocal truth about the state of our civilization, which is that most of America’s quality-of-life problems persist primarily because we allow them to. Whether by statute, apathy, or acquiescence to debauchery, we allow our cities to be littered with the dregs of humanity, often under a misguided appeal to empathy and compassion. Now, I take no issue with compassion as a virtuous ideal. However, I believe adulterating compassion as a short cut to equity is a recipe for societal collapse and is currently leading to the destruction of American civilization right before our eyes.
Over the last decade, I have witnessed a palpable shift in America toward what, at first glance, appeared to be the genuine ideal of tolerance. As with many well-meaning endeavors, this shift was intended to right past wrongs and create a more harmonious, accepting, and equitable society. In limited instances, the new attention brought to issues of societal inequality was long overdue and led to necessary conversations. However, I believe the focus on blanket acceptance erroneously assigned moral equivalence to destructive personal choices while concealing its impact on society under a rubric of embracing one’s, quote, “true identity.”
During this period of transformation, Americans were also emotionally browbeaten by the media and Hollywood through the constant rehashing of our past mistakes and the cherry-picking and distortion of our history (think the 1619 Project). This was intended to push false and derogatory narratives about our country and to turn average citizens into activists for radical and un-American ideas. Details around widely reported police shootings, for example, were deliberately misrepresented, I believe, to psychologically manipulate Americans to acquiesce to the demands of social justice rather than equal justice under the law.
These and many similar developments, including millions of dollars in donations from left-wing billionaires, led to the election of district attorneys like George Gascon, Larry Krasner, and Alvin Bragg, all of whom appear more concerned about protecting criminals than the innocent victims they prey on. It also led to the formation of movements like BLM and the subsequent adoption of policies like “defund the police” and “no-cash bail,” to the detriment of public safety in places like San Francisco, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and New York City.
Under a false umbrella of compassion, homelessness, vagrancy, and open-air drug use thrives unchecked in major cities across the country. Under a distorted rubric of equity, repeat offenders are released within hours, allowing them to reoffend, abuse, and injure even more innocent people. Under a dystopian interpretation of empathy, thousands of people with documented mental health issues are allowed to roam aimlessly in our cities, loiter in alleyways, and sleep in our subways without the help they desperately need for recovery.
So, when I hear people complain about life in America, I point them to the fact that most of the issues they reference are underwritten by politicians and persist at the pleasure of the very people we elected to represent us, under a distorted view of compassion. The adulteration of compassion has even bled into other facets of American life and is leading to policies and actions that would have been verboten just a few years ago.
Compassion is being used today to justify the physical mutilation and chemical transitioning of kids who are prone to manipulation and too young to comprehend the profound ramifications of their choices. Compassion is also being used as a reason to assist people in the ending of their own lives. Where does this end?
I believe it ends when we rise up as patriots and demand the return of true compassion. The kind of compassion that rejects the indulgences of the carnal mind. The kind that embraces immutable truths about human nature and seeks to empower Americans to reach their full potential, even when the road to that end is fraught with difficult sacrifices and uncertainty. I believe we need to open our mouths in every forum on and offline and boldly challenge false narratives about compassion. We cannot be willing passengers on a road to the destruction of our civilization. Hence, we must employ every legal and moral means to stem this generational tide and steer our great American ship back to safe harbor.
Alma Ohene-Opare is an immigrant to the United States who earned American citizenship in 2021. He is an up-and-coming writer, public speaker and political commentator. He lives in Utah and is married with four kids. You can follow him on TikTok, Instagram and Facebook under the handle, @willfulpositivity.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of The Daily Wire.