Our Nation Has A Long Way To Go To Get Healthy
As we approach the last few days of the Trump presidency, a friend remarked to me that Trump finally made good on his promise to Make America Great Again, because of the fact that due to his shenanigans we will soon have a Democrat for president, to go along with the democrat-controlled Senate and House. I wish it were all that simple. I wish that these past four years were just a long, extended nightmare, and that we were finally about to wake up to and realize that everything was alright. But unfortunately, nothing could be further from the truth.
The truth, the sad, pathetic truth, is that this country has been suffering from a low-grade infection since the advancements of the civil rights movements in the 60s. So many of us thought (wished? dreamed?) that the advancements for equality that we made in the 60s were the beginning of a new age in America – an age where one day in the not-too-distant future, skin-color would no longer matter. We thought that we were on the way to purging ourselves of the rotting cancer that is bigotry, discrimination and racial bias. In reality, we just reduced the symptoms a bit, and pushed the infection deeper into the system.
Then, along comes Donald Trump who, with his vile rhetoric, introduced a poison into the system that lowered the country’s immunity, and allowed that low-grade infection that we’ve suffered from all these years to suddenly bloom and take over. America has gone from walking around with a slight fever to lying in a bed in the ICU, on a ventilator, fighting for its life. Some might dispute this assertion, and think that the situation is not that dire. To them, I would point to the insurrectionists that attacked the Capitol a few days ago. That’s the infection brought to life. That’s the living embodiment of the 70 million people in this country that voted for Donald Trump two months ago, even after living through four years of his foolishness and chicanery.
So where do we go from here? How do we begin to heal this body that is our country, and not just get back to where we were pre-Trump, but to begin to truly eradicate the entirety of the infection? I don’t know. I will say that the one thing that gives me hope is the arrogance of some of the ‘bad players’. When Officer Derek Chauvin felt completely comfortable kneeling on the neck of George Floyd for 8 minutes and 46 seconds until he was dead even in front of a crowd of people shooting video of the incident, it showed those of the country who didn’t believe that things were this bad just how bad things really are. Chauvin’s arrogance (and Floyd’s sacrifice) have served to shine light in areas of our society that many refused to believe existed. And over the past few months, we’ve been witness to many more similar spectacles that serve as sobering testimony to exactly what kind of country America is.
So my hope is borne out of those that I have seen suddenly awaken and demand change, demand justice and demand accountability. Let’s all pray that it’s enough to turn this country around and put it back on the path to health and vitality at a level that it has never before achieved.