For a decade, I have watched as we have lived in a kind of national trance, and like so many Americans, have been deeply affected by it — my sleep, my appetite, my mood.
— Most of all it’s left me with an ever present seething anger.
Watching the country systematically break all its sacred promises to its citizens and to the world has been both heartbreaking and infuriating. It has been like witnessing the sun set on the American way.
I have asked myself a thousand times, how did so many come to believe:
- cruelty was acceptable
- lies were acceptable
- capitulation was acceptable
- abandoning allies was acceptable
— and selfishness was the source of American greatness?
And, my God, the damage we have brought down on the world, the needless deaths, the cynical betrayals, the abandonment of allies.
And to think we invited this misery upon the planet —
— not once, but TWICE, is breathtaking.
John Adams warned us long ago: “We may boast that we are one, the chosen people…but, after all, it would be but flattery, delusion, the self-deceit of the Pharisee.”
His words should be ringing in our ears today as we reckon with how we knowingly brought this nightmare upon ourselves.
Then came the midterm elections.
And, lo and behold, ordinary citizens from all across the fruited plain declared in a single voice:
- NO MORE!
- THIS IS NOT MY AMERICA!
- BE GONE WITH YOU!
We sat stunned as we watched the country elect a new generation of leaders. I was in Washington in 1974 after the Watergate midterms.
— But this is bigger, much bigger.
As I search my soul for answers as to what happened my thoughts turn to the poem, “Brothers,” by James Weldon Johnson, a poem I recited in debate competition.
At the center of the poem is the scene of a Black man tied to an oak tree and a white mob preparing him, who they call a beast, to be burned alive.
The Black man then speaks directly to his killers, calling them out, telling them:
- the beast they fear,
- the beast they’re attempting to purge,
- is the savagery inside themselves.
Listen to his voice in this excerpt and tell me it’s not about everything we refuse to see in ourselves:
I am a thing not new, I am as old
As human nature. I am that which lurks,
Ready to spring whenever a bar is loosed;
The ancient trait which fights incessantly
Against restraint, balks at the upward climb;
The weight forever seeking to obey
The law of downward pull; — and I am more:
The bitter fruit am I of planted seed;
The resultant, the inevitable end
Of evil forces and the powers of wrong.
We embody the very evil we say we’re purging.
These past ten years we’ve witnessed our dark spirits let loose to terrorize the world.
As a sobered-up old drunk, I know well the feeling of my dark side given the freedom to roam the world.
Now with the election behind us we can enter into a time of national recovery. Our decade-long stupor is over.
There is much to do, many amends to make. Some will take years but we must begin, and that beginning starts with ourselves. We must change the way we govern ourselves so as to contain the forces within us that, when let loose, can wreak such havoc and chaos. We have much to answer for.
We are a nation that must find our knees again.
Our vote didn’t cleanse us, it only awakened us. Our vote won’t keep our promise — only we will.
And no!
There is no way to return to the Promised Land. That land never existed. But we can become a land that keeps its promises.
As the Arab proverb says, “A promise is a cloud; fulfillment is the rain.”
LET IT RAIN DOWN ON AMERICA.
Just a thought…
Pat
Now my favorite rain song (again):