Woke up at 4 am with Nina Simone in my head.
"It's a new dawn, it's a new day, and I'm feeling..."
How AM I feeling? How are YOU feeling?!
On my end: the divisiveness of the country has me truly disheartened.
Yesterday, Trump’s motorcade drove through a far right, white supremacist crowd (have you seen the photos of the many Nazi and Confederate flags that flew above them? I don't want to do them the honor of reprinting here, but it was appalling) on his way to ... yep. You got it. Play golf.
Our lame duck president is not working to manage the growing pandemic, nor to shore up our economy being damaged by his lack of management. Instead he is playing golf, while actively encouraging these segregationists -- he is encouraging our civil division even as his many lawsuits are tossed out by the courts. He refuses to concede and continues to lie about the election and stall the transition to the Biden administration. Even worse, one of his former officials--one at the heart of the Russia investigation no less, tweeted, “The military is with the president.”
Luckily for us, they're not. Trump's pants must be on fire with so many lies, which is why he is mostly keeping out of view and not working.
We belong together: fighting for justice for all after centuries of oppression.
Our nation does not deserve white supremacists stoking another civil war as they did in the 1850's. These are, historically, the same people as the Constitutional originalists--in fact, according to historian Heather Cox Richardson, this was one of the strategies they promoted at the time. Government could not act, could not even build bridges or roads, unless it was written in the Constitution. Because if government DID take these actions, it would build a thriving economy APART FROM their system of enslavement.
A strong government serving all people takes power from the enslavers.
The parties have flipped--Lincoln's Republican Party was formed in OPPOSITION to these white supremacist southern Democrats--but the strategies remain similar. Our modern Republican Party now represents the slaveholders' legacy, as well as the interests of the 1% who hold the majority of our nation's wealth.
They don't want government support to repair and to grow a thriving economy independent of their white male interests.
So with this historical schism very much alive and well 200 years on, we're witness to a peaceful transition of power being stonewalled by those who desperately want to keep power for themselves.
I'm asking myself, and I ask you: what are we called to do in these short, impermanent lives that we have been given?
What actions will we take today, tomorrow, next week, to best serve others and not just ourselves?
How will we continue to bend the arc of the moral universe toward justice?
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