Weeping for My Country

I am exhausted.
I have no hope.
I am horrified.
I am heartbroken.

Yesterday I cried over my country like I have only cried twice before in my life: before my divorce, and after my father’s death.

All three were because of great loss and because of the tragedy and stupidity of the loss. And because a large part of my Pollyanna, things-will-always-turnout-okay, cock-eyed optimism attitude was, quite frankly destroyed by reality.

No alternative facts for me.

I spoke to a much-beloved person yesterday who explained to me that after eight years of having strangers shake their fingers in their face it felt exhilarating to not be on trial for simply being a straight white male.

A much-beloved person told me that having spent the past eight years constantly defending other’s right to free speech, their right to love who they will, and their right to fill-in-the-blank, but then being shouted at and threatened and bullied by those very same people who wanted them to deny their Christian faith and renounce their race it felt good to not have to explain and shout and defend.

I get it. I live in Portland, Oregon. The Politically Correct have become the Permanently Pissed-Off since November. We have had protests and riots left and right. The extreme liberals have, multiple times, taken to violence when faced with people who disagree with them, most recently cold-cocking a Trump supporter while they were at the airport to protest Trump’s immigration ban.

So I know, I truly know, how difficult it has been for conservatives and whites and straight men to live in this country for the past eight years.

But I hoped that, regardless of their political beliefs, my conservative friends would also remember that their party was the party of Lincoln, and that they would bind up the wounds of their fellow man. 

Instead, they are gleefully shouting with joy every time that Trump speaks or acts. When confronted with his lies they simply shout you down. Like Trump, they change the conversation to one they want to have and they attack.

Yes, they seem like people who have been crushed under foot for eight years and now they are on top. And they will not stop before crushing their oppressors.

And the liberals? The anti-Trump people? They are no better. They are protesting and marching and shouting and hash-tagging. But they are making no conciliatory gestures, either. For that side, they are dealing with their own grief and loss, and in the process they don’t care who or what they destroy, just as long as everyone else hurts as badly as they do.

Both sides have lost their ability to see the other side.

Both sides are hurting, but they refuse to see that lashing out doesn’t make their own pain go away.

Neither side is willing to give up anything for peace.

Everyone is becoming more and more entrenched in their opinion, certain that their opponents are the most evil people alive.

And we have no leaders.

I love my country. I love it deeply and strongly. I love so much of our tradition and history of goodness and strength. As a historian, I also know that we have been petty and mean and vindictive in the past. And we have hurt our own. Deeply and cruelly sometimes. But we are still that city on a hill. Or we were.

I want, no, I desperately need, to believe that things are going to turn out okay. But I am losing my Pollyanna faith that it will happen.

We seem to be turning into a nation of narrow-minded bigots. A nation that has come to the conclusion that there can be only one way of thinking and acting, and if you disagree with that side’s version of that one way, then you have no rights, no standing, and can expect no mercy. Both sides, the liberals and the conservatives have descended into this childish, narcissistic, petulant way of thinking. There is no broad generosity. There is no tolerance. And so, there is no peace.

And so I wept for my country yesterday. And through the night. And I still weep for it this morning.