My Heart is Full of Sadness

My heart is full of sadness.  Just as you think this country can’t go any lower a string of violent events consumes the media. These events are filled with hate followed by rhetoric of falsehoods, blaming and more hate.  Today it feels like there is no turning back to an America where we care about each other, watch out for each other.  Do you feel like people are out to get you, to get me, to get our neighbors, and just because we don’t agree with them?  Do you like me suffer from lack of hope? We are divided and I wonder if both sides suffer from a similar lack of hope or is it viciousness from one side? 

This week’s violence started on Wednesday when a white man walked into a Kentucky Kroger store killing two African Americans.  He had just made a failed attempt to barge into a black church for what they think a similar act.  This incident went under the radar, until the mail bombs were discovered and the synagogue killers took place back to back.  I can fill these pages with incident after incident of violent hate, I can’t find the caring, the unconditional acts of kindness.

A common thread in all of these acts of violence, white men killing nonwhites.  Never in my wildest dreams until Ragan became president in the 80’s did I think I would witness this kind of deathly discrimination in America after the civil rights movements’ gains of the 60’s.  The 60’s brought hope to me, through what I thought were reconciliations of the dark side of America’s history.  All that is gone this week and all I can think of are story after story of America’s violence towards Native Americans, African Americans, Jewish people, Asians, Japanese, and yes women and children.  We have gone back to the dark ages where only white men are safe.  Its as if the white men in power have other men do their bidding today keeping the rest of us in our place.

In 1992 Patrick Buchanan declared at the Republican Convention in Houston Texas, “that there was a cultural war taking place for the soul of America.  He denounced the Democratic Party as one that supports abortion, radical feminism and the homosexual rights movement.”  He accused President Clinton’s agenda as imposing abortions on women, supporting homosexual rights, discriminating against religious schools and forcing women into combat.  Buchanan claimed this is not the kind of change America wants.  Even though he didn’t declare a war on anyone who wasn’t white that’s exactly what he was saying between the lines.  Publicly racist rhetoric at this time was a big no, no.  I strongly believe the talk behind the scenes damned anyone who was not white, Christian or not on their side.  Their actions showed it and created the climate in today’s politics.

We witnessed this week the manifestation of the rhetoric started by Ronald Regan perpetuated by Patrick Buchanan and unleashed by Donald Trump.  They unleashed their agenda under the guise of freedom of the media, freedom of the individual, of religion, but the undercurrent, the real reason was for their white selves.  How do we get back to caring about the collective well being of the American people?  As I write this I try to think about a time in our history when all Americans ever had what was promised in the words of our Constitution;

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity……

And I slump into despair, I am not optimistic today, I was not optimistic when Trump got elected and I wish I could fill you with hope but today I have a hard time finding hope.  What kept me going over the last couple of decades was my right to vote, but today I feel like even my vote be has been manipulated into meaninglessness.  I will vote and I will vote against hate.  I wish I was voting for compassion, for hope for all of us but this has been taken away from us through Citizen’s United, big money, gerrymandering, and other tactics to suppress common peoples’ say in our government. 

The only hope I can grasp onto are acts of kindness towards my neighbors no matter who they are and hopefully that kindness will spread to the next neighbor, and the next neighbor and grow into a movement because my only hope today is to build a grassroots movement built on a chain of human kindness.  Pass it on.