In my retirement as a teacher, I confess mortification–nay, shame–for even thinking to attach the possessive brand of “Trump’s” to “America.” Shameful, yes, but is it true? Is America today Trump’s America?
“What’s in a name?” the poet asked, and then declared, “that which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” Would Trump’s America smell as sweet as Katharine Lee Bates’ “America the Beautiful” from sea to shining sea?
“Confirm thy soul in self-control,” Bates’ poem admonishes, glorifying the nation’s foundational heroes, “who more than self their country loved, and mercy more than life.” Self-control. Self-sacrifice. Mercy. Words that do not jump to mind when contemplating the character and squalid self-centered vision of America’s venal ex-president and his copycat political acolytes.
How shameful to acknowledge how far Donald J. Trump’s brand has cast dark shadows on America’s erstwhile ideals of civic virtue. And please, don’t hypocritically mention crowning our good with brotherhood in Trump’s brutal vision. What does brotherhood mean to white nationalists?
“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal,” solemnly intoned the 16th president of a great country rent by bloody civil war over the economic right to enslave people.
Will the 21st century finally prove Father Abraham and our nation’s founders wrong in proclaiming that America is dedicated to the proposition of human equality? Not wrong concerning the proposition that all human beings are entitled to equal rights protected by their government, but that America is dedicated to this proposition? Have we ever been?
Is America today dedicated to democratic equality in the dark shadows of Trump’s America? Is human equality under the law the priority value among those who gleefully cheer and vote to support Trump’s dark vision of: saving us from s- – -hole countries and their inferior people of inferior races and false religions, demonizing immigrants and foreigners, embracing and emulating authoritarian dictators, abandoning our democratic allies, conflating ego and personal interest with national interest, and rejecting the findings of science, trained expertise, and the oversight functions of a free press, while systematically weaponizing the agencies of the federal government as vehicles for justifying and implementing the capricious edicts of an astonishingly ignorant commander in chief?
Is this what we have finally become after 12 score and eight years of American history? Will the loud, angry disciples of Donald J. Trump permanently prevail in redefining what America stands for in a chaotic world that faces an increasingly ominous future? Will God mend our flaws and shed his grace to make America great again in the dark shadows of Trump’s America?
With or without God’s grace, I confess mortification and shame to acknowledge the manifest prospects of our country descending into the shadows. But no–we must be better than this. That is my faith. Father Abraham’s words of dedication to the unfinished work of America’s devotion to the cause of human freedom and equality still await their fulfillment. His words are inspiring; easy to recite but not easy to fulfill, neither in his day nor in ours.
But we must continue to try. This is our challenge, the great task remaining before us. Lincoln’s faith is my faith, that our country’s egalitarian ideals, upheld by democratic government in a humane society, shall not perish in the shadows of Trump’s America. Teach it in our homes and teach it in our schools. Teach our children, teach our youth. Teach our girls as well as our boys. Teach our Black children, our brown children, our multiracial children, and the children of immigrant parents. And yes, please teach our white children of Anglo-European descent, both rich and poor, from our cities coast to coast and in the smallest towns of the heartland.
In the dark shadows of Trump’s America, teach them the light of Lincoln’s faith.
Gordon Shepherd lives in Conway.
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Publish date : 2024-08-07 21:06:00
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