My favorite Wake Forest basketball coach was fond of reciting the Ralph Waldo Emerson quote, “Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be.”
Across the vastly varying degrees of character, credibility and eloquence throughout our country’s history, the President of the United States has assumed the No. 1 spot as chief influencer. This fact – and that quote – have a depressing, disgusting dark side with our latest leader.
A day after a Florida suspect was arrested in connection with the mailing of bombs to prominent Democrats, including two former presidents, a white, male American terrorist murdered 11 worshippers at a Pittsburgh synagogue. That came on the heels of a racist Louisville gunman killing two African Americans in a grocery store after attempting to storm a black church.
Donald Trump’s response? He complained how the bomb coverage was detracting from positive Republican midterm momentum and then used the phrase “lock him up” while chuckling in reference to George Soros, a target of the bombing attempt. Instead of unequivocal condemnation of the violence in Pittsburgh, he blamed the synagogue for not having armed protection. The president later continued his very dangerous labeling of the media as “enemy of the people.”
Last year in Charlottesville, Va., three months after my family and I visited our first college niece there, a woman was killed when a homicidal maniac drove his vehicle into a crowd of counter-protesters during a weekend of militant right-wing marches. Trump famously said there were “very fine people, on both sides” of the white supremacist demonstration. (As we know, well before that Trump bragged about sexual assault and mocked a handicapped reporter.)
Make no mistake, Americans have always killed each other, from the Civil War to the lynching of thousands of blacks to constant domestic violence and school shootings. The difference is our president doesn’t seem to care, that is, when he’s not directly sowing hateful division and stoking the ‘culture wars,’ including a recent approving boast about a GOP politician body-slamming a reporter.
As little boys and girls across the land joyfully and innocently prepare for Halloween festivities, powerful interests on the right continue to prioritize unfettered access to military-style assault weapons over their safety. The president himself unabashedly cited arms sales to Saudi Arabia as a reason to support the denial coming from the Middle Eastern kingdom regarding its role in the recent assassination of a Washington Post columnist.
White people, especially males like me, have had it really good in this country. Those of us still connected to our principles must ask ourselves: are we too busy or comfortable or self-interested to stand up for what is right during this very scary time in America? Do we favor divisive media messages over “Love Thy Neighbor” coming from the pulpit or the liberty-and-justice-for-all ideals in our nation’s sacred oaths and texts? How will our children and grandchildren view the choices we make in this time?
Silence favors the oppressor, as does the seemingly ubiquitous ‘both sides do it’ and ‘what-about-ism’ arguments. DO NOT take a fraction of a step in the direction of normalizing this president’s behavior. I truly worry that we’re one election away from being a democracy in name only…
As my favorite president, a Republican, said during our most divisive time as a country, “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”
God Bless America — all of it.
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