How Strong Are We?

A ten o'clock last night I got a tearful call from my ex-wife Suze in Minneapolis. From her 18^thfloor window, she was watching the city she has come to love in flames.

All America is watching and what we are seeing is what Malcolm X called “chickens coming home to roost” when Kennedy was assassinated. For decades in Minneapolis and most other American cities, police brutality has been a given. Black people have known daily threats to their lives long long before the arrival of Covid-19. 

To me, the most chilling aspect of the death of George Floyd was the expression of the murderous cop kneeling on his neck. It was the face of the centuries of outright racism that has plagued America since the first  kidnapped African-America was landed here. There was a bland, thoroughly evil expression on his face; he would kneel as long as it took to kill this man. And three of his accomplices kept back anyone who might help their victim. 

Trump called the killing “sad.” Sad is when your mourn a person's peaceful passing. Sad is not how you react to a televised murder – a lynching on the ground. Sad is not tweeting for the shooting to start. Sad is not mocking the Minneapolis mayor. This is not sad – it is pure evil. 

We are still a deeply racist country. And this deep and still-spreading stain on our national conscience is sapping what strength we have left. A fascist president, enabled by a willing Senate, a crashed economy, a murderous virus – all these are now overlaid on the racist base of America to leach away the democratic vitals of our nation. 

Are we strong enough as a people to survive this ongoing tragedy? Or has the fog of entitlement and cruelty that is enveloping too many here finally broken the American spirit? Will armed vigilantes on the steps of state capitols and thousands of maskless partiers become the new America? Have we lost our strength of will? Can we actually last as a free and cognizant nation until November? Will we be allowed to? 

Joe Biden is totally right when he says that this election is a battle for the American soul. But is this soul worth saving – or have we gone so far down the road of mindlessness and racism that we will inevitably be consigned to the dustbin of history? 

And yet there is still in this broad and sweeping experiment in democracy a deep and abiding sense of justice and fair play. And of duty and responsibility. And of the heroism and bravery that is on full and constant display in the noble and selfless heroes who are responding to the pandemic

by putting their lives in constant peril.

Will America's will to survival be strong enough to actually survive in any kind of recognizable form or will we fade from history with either the whimper of defeat or the howl and madness that vomits from the White House?

I'm putting my money on America. And Minneapolis.