No matter how big or how small the struggles I’ve faced in my life, my father’s words have echoed in my mind, “This too shall pass.”
When I learned of the swift confirmation and swearing in of Judge Kavanaugh I felt a great weight upon my heart. I began to question everything I thought I knew about my country. Many years ago I put on the uniform of a United States sailor and I always wore that uniform with pride. I served at a time when I didn’t agree with the politics of those in power but I felt what called us Americans meant we were all playing for the same team.
I don’t feel like that anymore. I feel the divide is deep and wide and not just among those elected to make decisions on our behalf. I feel the rift growing between families and neighbors who disagree on science, religion, and who should have rights when it comes to a woman and an unborn child. Where once we could agree to disagree, we now are entrenched and those who aren’t for us must be against us.
I try to remind myself that my act of service wasn’t for a government, it was for a people. Long ago I believed Americans were worth dying for and I took an oath to defend my country with my life. I was young and naive but I knew what I was doing. When the towers fell on 9/11 I was at the tip of the spear, ready to do my part in dishing out American justice for those lives taken. When I came home, I saw a country united where neighbors of all race and cultural backgrounds proudly displayed the flag that unifies us all.
Today I see athletes kneeling because the symbol of our nation no longer matches our vision. I see women marching, demanding they not only be heard, but believed. I see injustice everywhere as those with plenty get more and those with little get less. And I watch as my government plays party politics at the expense of our nation. We are not great, we are not great again, and if this is what winning looks like, I’d rather lose. If we were losing when we were defending freedom and justice for all, and if winning means ripping children from mother’s arms, praising Nazis for marching in our streets, and shaking hands with the world’s worst dictators, then we’ve lost our identity, we’ve lost what it means to stand up and defend the oppressed. We have become the enemy.
I’m not sure when our nation wandered down this road of division but I do know those who oppose liberty and justice are celebrating. We have done to ourselves what no foreign agent has been able to do, we are divided. This is not the country I swore and oath to defend.
And yet I again hear the wisdom of my father, “This too shall pass.” But I wonder, pass into what? Are we headed for civil war or a second revolution? Are we too far gone to bridge the chasm that separates our different cultural, religious, and social ideologies? I hope not. I hope very soon we can remember what we once stood for. I hope that out of our many voices, we can be one great nation. E pluribus unum.
End Transmission