Pre-Election Reflections

I am a seventy-something white guy. Between the almost four years of Donald Trump and eight months of Covid-19, I have had lots of reasons (and in 2020, lots of time) to reflect. Reflect on my own life and how I got to where I am, and reflect on my country and how it got to where it is.

It has occurred to me that--in some ways--my life has really been a process of unlearning and relearning the truths about America: what it was, what it is, and what it's always been. One of my life's regrets is that it has taken me so many years to get here.

And it's not only America. Among the "friends" of the United States, most (excepting most of our European allies, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand) are run by undemocratic or anti-democratic tyrants, often fueled by religious hatreds analogous to the Religious Right bigots in the US: India, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Turkey, Philippines, Brazil, Egypt, et al. The idea that the arc of history bends toward justice sounds poetic and lovely, but it's wishful thinking.

So what sorts of things did I have to relearn? I went to pretty good schools in Wisconsin. But a lot of what I learned was at the very least a matter of using incorrect words. We learned terms like "manifest destiny", which was a euphemism for "genocide". Or "federalism" and "states rights" as substitutes for "Jim Crow". We never learned the rich history of slave rebellions. But we did learn that America supported democracy throughout the world, when in fact Yankee Imperialism backed despots everywhere and actively participated in anti-democratic coups all over the world, particularly in our own hemisphere. American history textbooks presented slavery as kind of a secondary cause of the Civil War.

Has America been heroic and good at times? Absolutely. And we have also been very wrong and very bad at times. That makes us like most other countries. The concept of American Exceptionalism is a sham, whether it's espoused by Reagan or Obama. (As a Christian I consider it out-and-out idolatry.) White folks show brief flashes of support and empathy when police murder George Floyd or Breonna Taylor. But the Whitelash is swift and unforgiving when the reaction isn't as nice and pretty as they'd like.

No matter who the winners are in the upcoming election, America has a lot of work to do. Trump's term has been unquestionably the worst of my lifetime, without any redeeming qualities. (This is quite a high--or is it low?--bar to clear, considering the disaster of George W's presidency.) America in my lifetime has done far worse under Republicans than Democrats, but the problems we face were created in a markedly bipartisan way. I will be looking for ways to take a more active part in that fight (and it is a fight). I think it is not too late.