This Election of Hope
“From sea to shining sea”
I couldn’t sleep the night of 9/11, 2001 — a day that in some way seems to have a similar level of gravitas as today — so I stayed up reading online all night long. There is one particular piece I can recall vividly, from writer Leonard Pitts:“It’s my job to have something to say. They pay me to provide words that help make sense of that which troubles the American soul.”
No one pays me to ease the troubled American soul, but on the morning of the election I’d like to try to ease mine. Because America has never seemed so divided — not by a long shot. Politicians have never been so unwilling to comprise, ideology has never in my lifetime reigned supreme over duty to nation. And more importantly, duty to one another. And tonight, we will be at our worst. Trust me when I say this — I do so after much consideration. There will be no compromise for days. No concessions. No “I want to congratulate my opponent.” We are, for the moment, well past that unified level of civility.
Yet I am at peace. At peace with the process. At peace, unbelievably so, with whatever outcome there might be. Whichever winner. As I read social media posts and news feeds, this, of course, is not the overwhelming sense of the moment. Quite to the contrary. So I wanted to share just one thought.
In your lifetime, it is estimated you will meet 80,000 people, a large number that surprised me. Not interact with on social media, not cross paths with on the street. You will meet and know them at some level. Now think on your life in this nation— because the vast number of people you have met are Americans for the vast majority of us. Strip away the social media. Take away the vitriol. Take away, for a second, whatever ideology they may have that is diametrically opposed to yours.
What you are left with, or at least what I am left with, is people who care about one another. People who, when if they saw a building on fire, would rush in to save whoever they could. I say this without hyperbole because I’ve seen it in person. I’ve seen complete strangers rush to help me. I’ve been a complete stranger who has rushed to help another. I imagine at some point we almost all will or have.
It seems like we, as a nation, we will be divided forever. It will seem more like it tonight and in the following days. Indeed, it was one of our founding fathers, John Adams, who said “Remember democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet, that did not commit suicide.” To date, Adams was wrong in almost ever word he uttered in that sentence. I reject this belief. In the middle, away from the far extremes on each side, those multitudes of people I alluded to who you have met. The tens of thousands. They don’t want to quarrel with you. They don’t want to quarrel over politics. They would much rather help than harm you. And my faith in this nation rests squarely and resolutely on the following. It is WE THE PEOPLE that dictates where this nation is heading. The media doesn’t make it seem that way because it is profitable for them to do otherwise. Politicians do not make it seem this way because it is self-interested for them to do otherwise. But for the vast majority of us, I’ll allude back to Pitts. Because what he saw and said on 9/11 wasn’t writing to ease the soul as he claimed, and I imagined believed at the time. It was prophetic. And what he saw in America reassures me to this day.
Let me tell you about my people. We are a vast and quarrelsome family, a family rent by racial, social, political and class division, but a family nonetheless.We're frivolous, yes, capable of expending tremendous emotional energy on pop cultural minutiae -- a singer's revealing dress, a ball team's misfortune, a cartoon mouse. We're wealthy, too, spoiled by the ready availability of trinkets and material goods, and maybe because of that, we walk through life with a certain sense of blithe entitlement.We are fundamentally decent, though -- peace-loving and compassionate. We struggle to know the right thing and to do it. Some people -- you, perhaps -- think that any or all of this makes us weak. You're mistaken. We are not weak. Indeed, we are strong in ways that cannot be measured by arsenals.When provoked by this level of barbarism, we will bear any suffering, pay any cost, go to any length, in the pursuit of justice. I tell you this without fear of contradiction. I know my people, as you, I think, do not. What I know reassures me.