How did we get here? It seems every day we are suffering another convulsion. Many think it started at the beginning of the year from hell with the coronavirus. China’s deception. Our country’s leaders’ incompetence. Let’s not deal with it and it will go away. Suddenly we were locked in our homes, millions out of work. We were hiding behind masks to protect ourselves from a killer we couldn’t see, but feared it could be hidden in a friends’ or strangers’ breath. We were floundering and afraid. How could this happen? We thought we were the greatest country in the world. We have the best health care system in the world. But years of bad decisions about what’s important caught up with us. It was like going to war and realizing we didn’t have enough guns, ammunition, and helmets. Then it got worse. The disease we’ve been trying to fight for 400 years and couldn’t cure exploded from below the surface of society where it has always haunted us.
It took 8:46 seconds of a white police officer kneeling on a black man’s neck, and staring defiantly into the lens of a cellphone camera as the handcuffed George Floyd begged for his life while three other cops didn’t try to stop it. This led to two weeks of protest and rage against racial injustice and police brutality. People marched in the streets wearing masks and carrying signs demanding change. It was a time for leaders to stand up. Listen and act. Again, as with the coronavirus, leaders couldn’t or wouldn’t see the real issue. The person the country looks to in time of crisis was deaf to the desperate demands for change. To him, it was all about law and order. He was going to be the tough guy who wouldn’t let those people dominate his streets. But this is a disease that’s infected us for centuries, and Trump isn’t the first leader who has failed to deal with it, and it’s not something that can be cured by one person. We the people have to find the cure.
We have been through years of trauma in our history, and we’ve survived and even righted some wrongs. I believe our current age of trauma started on the sunny morning in September almost 20 years ago when those planes came crashing down on us. It was followed by years of an unending war that killed and maimed thousands that still has no end. A recession ignited by greed that forced thousands out of work and out of their homes. In the middle of that trauma, we did what many thought was once impossible. We elected a black man, a liberal Democrat, president. While many celebrated this historic event with hopes for real change, others ran to gun shops out of fear their guns would be taken away. And there’s nothing more frightening to some, than not having enough guns. While I admire and supported Obama, I believe reaction to him lead us to Trump. The political divide that started in the 1960s cleaved into a deep canyon where we all trapped and looking for a way out.
The question is how do we get back to the idea of America? I don’t see any Mandelas, or Lincolns or Kings on the horizon coming to help us heal. Maybe the leaders of tomorrow will come from those masses we have seen in streets these last few weeks. But the search to remove the stain of racial injustice has been resistant to even the courage of those three leaders who gave their lives for the cause. But we can never give up on the search for America and the what it should really mean.
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