Election is reflection of dark times in America’s soul

I am too sad to watch tonight’s debate. At this point, we already know what we need to know about Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. People are undecided only because they are both such horrible choices. Indeed, the choice between a President Clinton and a President Trump fills me with melancholy.

I mourn the country I thought I knew.

{mosads}I grew up believing in the men storming Omaha Beach, the extraordinary ordinary Americans whose spirit returned when everyday American passengers together thwarted terrorists on Flight 93. I believe in a country full of people who stop to drag strangers from burning cars, fish strangers from raging floods, rescue strangers from evil-doers.

In ten thousand businesses in thousands of cities, people work to provide for their families and serve their communities. In thousands of church basements across the fifty states, the faithful give of their time to serve the needy, the broken, the addicted, the disabled. This is the land I know, the land that I worry is losing its heart.

We have long sent our best and brightest across the globe, telling the victims of communism, of totalitarianism, of corruption that they too deserve to live in freedom and dignity. They’re the best of us, people like Ambassador Chris Stevens who dedicated his life to helping others live that dream.

Now, if Trump’s rhetoric is to be believed and his followers heard, some of us believe democracy and basic freedoms are a fool’s dream, that some peoples do not deserve or cannot handle them.

We have long told newcomers it does not matter from where they come or what their background of culture is, if they espouse American freedoms and work hard, they can join the proud ranks of this country. Now some clearly tell others, as in the darkest days of our history, your kind is not welcome here.

We have preached a civil gospel new in the history of the world, that a country is not bound by its past mistakes, but can be better than its ancestors were. We ended slavery, at the cost of precious lives. We enacted civil rights to put show our ideals were more than just empty words.

Now we once again fight along racial lines. We divide people by race, by creed, by religion. I cannot stand seeing racism openly practiced in my country, the ugliness that once hid in the shadows paraded in the light of day. It hurts my heart.

When did we become so mean? When did we become a country that sees an African-American man bleeding out on the street or a child bleeding out in Syria and instead of acknowledging the human tragedy before us, assign them to a class of people who do not deserve our pity?

What line divides the black protestor from his black brother in police gear? The Muslim mother in a refugee camp trying to feed her children from a Christian mother in Georgia trying to protect hers? A shocking number of Americans are willing to reject common citizenship, common humanity.

When did we become a country whose only reaction to millions of displaced people is to bar our gates?

I remember a country of compassion, of generosity, a country that responded to famine in Ethiopia with outpourings of donations, and to Haiti, and to countless unfortunate victims of disaster. This is a country that decided AIDS was an abomination and flooded Africa and other areas with medications simply because it was the right thing to do.

This is a nation that even fed its enemy the Soviet Union out of its own breadbasket. Now Donald Trump says it’s time for the rest of the world to pull its weight, but I have always been proud to be in a country that gives out of its prosperity and generosity. I have been proud that America is the country to which others turn for help and for inspiration.

That generosity has always been linked to the can-do American attitude. World hunger? We can improve production to eliminate it. Unclean water? We can create solutions. We solve problems. We overcome them.

And yet our fear holds sway when it comes to terrorism, to retaining our compassion and commitment to Constitutional freedoms while stopping those who would hurt us. That problem is too big, the voters seem to be saying. We can’t solve it.

The crisis is not in the situation, but in our confidence to address it. We apparently have lost our belief that adhering to our basic Constitutional freedoms will light our way to security. Something sadly craven in the American psyche is willing to trade one for the other.

I have always believed in the good sense of the American voter. In the past, we the people has seen through every charlatan, every would-be tinpot dictator and ideological extremist. The America I thought I knew would have laughed both Trump and Clinton to the curb. It respected itself enough to demand better.

This is not a crisis of party, or of awful candidates. It is a crisis of America’s soul.

These are dark times in our country. No matter who wins tonight’s debate or November’s election, it’s going to hurt. Nevertheless I, a cock-eyed optimist I suppose, believe in the America I knew. America’s freedom, self-reliance, confidence, and compassion are woven deep in its DNA.

I think America is making, has made, a huge mistake. But when I go to the mall or the movies or a kid’s sports game and see people — black, white, Japanese, Korean, Muslim, Hindu — mixing peacefully, I know that pluralism is woven deep within us. When I see people volunteering at their local meal program or in distant lands, I know compassion is a foundational part of who we are.

When I see people starting businesses and creating new products, I know innovation is still woven into the fabric of our land. When I sit in a state courthouse and see people of every race and language have their fair say in court, I know that corruption has not taken over the country.

These things do not go away easily. We are a people used to being free. We are a people used to being good, or at least aspiring to be good.

At the same time, we as individuals have to fight to make America happen. We cannot just trust the best of America is what will remain because America is a thing that must be renewed every generation. As for me, no matter who wins, I will fight until my dying breath for the America I knew, I know, I will know.

What else can we do? We must go on.

Rebecca Cusey is a writer based in Washington DC. She writes about movies, TV, pop culture, politics and faith. Follow her on Twitter @Rebecca_Cusey.

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