The unending struggle for “liberty and justice for all” has never been easy. It is no more difficult now than it has ever been. At best, it has always been two steps forward and one step backward. Do the names Martin Luther King, Jr., Robert F. Kennedy, and Malcolm X ring a bell?
The people of the United States are no better and no worse than they were when they twice elected a black man with a Muslim name.
What happened? I don't think that Americans have recently plunged into a bottomless pit of moral perversity. I think that many are frightened and frightened people do crazy things.
Their fear is not entirely baseless. Ten million undocumented immigrants in recent years actually is too many. This is one million more than live in all of Los Angeles County and two million more than live in New York City.
I am not surprised that leaders can fan into flames the embers of racism, sexism and jingoism that have not been wholly extinguished in American life and probably never will be.
I don’t like seeing people falling from airplanes to which they were clinging as desperate attempts to escape the horrors that otherwise awaited them. I don’t like seeing others climbing through fences or wading through waters illegally to enter this nation when our own policies and practices are partly why they are leaving the homes they love. I don’t like seeing myself paying in restaurants $10.00 for a bowl of tomato soup and $20.00 for a bowl of pasta when inflation has stolen from millions the ability to eat nutritiously in their own homes.
I don't like seeing the war in Ukraine devolve into an endless conflict that neither side can win. I don't like seeing the gender blending and changing that some are encouraging among people who are too young to make such major decisions, especially when those who are advocating these invasive interventions in specific cases are not medical professionals.
The people of the United States were not in the dark about who Donald Trump is and what he will do. Contrary to what some say, I think that most of them will never regret voting for him even when what he does advantages them a little bit and advantages others a lot. \
I am persuaded that the two people who are most responsible for the reelection of Donald Trump are Joe and Jill Biden. Of the two, I think that she is the more culpable because she was among the last to concede that her husband was not functioning well and that he should not seek to be the President for another term.
I don’t believe that “God’s control of all things” put Donald Trump back in power because that is not how I understand divine providence. I believe that God almost never intervenes and controls but that God always paticipates as a positive influence that prompts as much healing and health that is possible in specific circumstances. Whether these better possibilities become actual is up to us.
Our job now is to support Donald Trump when it is morally possible and to oppose him when it isn’t. This is the American way and it always will be. It is difficult, very difficult. But it is not impossible.