How America proceeds into the future with a growing but economically disadvantaged HispanicLatino population is hardly a question on the national agenda.  In almost defaulting on its financial obligations last year, the United States demonstrated in real time that after 40 years of economic change, precious few Americans understand how the country got to this point and fewer have a clue about the way forward.  Having barely devoted time to understand the larger economic and demographic story transforming the country, the vast majority of Americans could not possibly understand the criticality of raising the country’s debt ceiling.

HispanicLatinos are no different.  Beyond knowing the general framework of the problems and challenges facing the country, few have any idea about what they should do next.  Even though many more HispanicLatinos are sensing how critical they are to the nation’s future, the true scope of their importance does not animate their daily lives.

Most HispanicLatinos can see the consequences of not having been a part of the exceptional success the country enjoyed through the years.  Whatever HispanicLatinos believe – or want to believe – about how they arrived at their current time and place, they by now should possess a highly realistic perspective about the need for change and for new leadership and strategies to address the country’s problems, which include their own.

HispanicLatinos know better than most the fate that awaits a country that does not get its financial house in order and fails to pay attention to the development of its people – the building blocks of its future.  Only after making tremendous gains in population growth in the last 40 years after centuries of not registering in the national consciousness have HispanicLatinos begun to gain significant traction in the life of the country.  Were the present situation confronting America not pressing and important to the security and stability of the world, HispanicLatinos could laugh at the irony.

Many are the products of a legacy of outright racist and discriminatory actions.  But much of their predicament was ordained by geographic isolation that did not foster demands for social inclusion, and others simply did not want to be part of something they did not understand.  Whatever the reasons, they generated the same results which if not addressed and resolved are portentous.

Irony aside, the current circumstances are too serious.  While the United States might not be intrinsically exceptional by Nature’s demanding standards, its importance to the world at this moment in the history of humankind requires that it remain special enough in many regards.

No other nation hardly could help lead the world through the impending crises of our time, including global overpopulation – a curious contradiction indeed, for America must have a dynamic, growing population to keep up with other nations of the world whose populations are exploding.  Paradoxically, as America’s standing and power ebbs in a reordered world, HispanicLatinos are elemental to the country’s future.  And so being, they will have to create a new vision of who they are and how they fit in the new America of the new millennium.  They will have to do more on their own because they are out on their own.

Given America’s current state, the prospects for personal sacrifice are almost a given certainty, and they might form part of the answers HispanicLatinos develop for the future, though they are going to have to take additional steps to reach a new level of clarity of the circumstances around them.

When and if HispanicLatinos come to understand the entirety of the country’s circumstances, they will rally to America’s cause if they can see how they should serve and they will be ready to make personal sacrifices if necessary.

Feel free to forward these blogs adapted from previous writings, with additional thoughts published invariably in between.