This period has showed us that our republic and economy are fragile things. Our long held national ideal, a strong country, the greatest country in the world as my generation had drilled into their heads, united, our very name, a myth. Interferences in our elections prove we can be attacked from without. Hatred, prejudice and ignorance show we can be attacked from within. It shows that we can destroy ourselves if we allow it.
I don't have answers, I feel powerless. My struggles as a gay man to be accepted and respected by society can be blown apart by a single court decision. A nation can be blown apart by the actions of 4 police officers, those sworn to serve and protect, doing the opposite.
The peaceful protests carry a powerful message of what our country can become. The violent infiltrators amid the protesters and actions by some police forces across the country carry a different message, just as powerful.
I look back over my 6 decades pondering how we got here. How, what is touted as a great economy, in a 10 week period, can be lying, for many of my country men, around their feet in shards. It was a house of cards, only a slight move bringing it down, leaving a quarter without work, many financially devastated. It will take them years to recover, if they are able to recover at all. Issues of racial and financial inequality tear us apart. Yet many follow a leader that can not competently lead, blind to this. Some of these suffer under the inequality yet refuse to acknowledge it. They are told, as many of differing views are, that it is us against them.
We need us to become something that includes all. We need to develop a mutual respect for one another as fellow human beings and national neighbors. We need to remake and repair, form a country that is united.
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