Blog 734 – 08.26.2017
Together, You And I

The words to songs from my youth come to mind often. One said, “United we stand. Divided we fall. And if our backs should ever be against the world. We’ll be together you and I.” And yet the illusions that we are separate and apart persist – that we are different or in another category. If you see anything of beauty in another it is only because that beauty resides in you or you could not recognize it recognize it and a bit less flattering perhaps the things we hate in others are also in us or we would not recognize them either. We are for better or worse equal parts human and divine, earthly and heavenly, sour and sweet, etc. And to quote a colloquialism, “That ain’t half bad.” But it is itself pretty wonderful as is everyone of us.

When I find myself disappointed in someone else I have only to remember how many times I have disappointed myself and I well up with tears of compassion and get back in my brother or sister’s corner where I belong. I would not want the thankless job of being President of the United States on a bet and so I sincerely hope and intend the highest and best for any brother or sister who takes on that hard and difficult job. Even George Washington our first and probably most beloved President had his detractors. We Americans have always had a history of being “malcontents”  and complainers. We left homes on foreign shores to come to the New World and then proceeded to make it just like the unhappy place we left. We cut down the trees, wore out the soil with continuous unrotated crops, till we had to move further and further west, repeating the process and crowding the indigenous people that we did not kill further and further west, till they like the Allied troops at Dunkirk in WWII had no place else to go and worse they had no fleet of private boats to evacuate them either. For all our efforts to point to the progress we have made in this land, we often fail to remember that it has come at a tremendous cost to many and that relatively few have reaped the lion share of the benefits of that progress.

And the why for that great disparity is the lie that we are not in this together, that we are not alike in way more ways than we are different, that some deserve the best and all the rest less. The recent deaths and disturbance over Confederate Statues is really about white people believing that they are privileged and trying to keep alive the lie that these United States are a WASP nation (White Anglo Saxon Protestant), that it always has been and always will be. It never was and I hope it never is though I too would be lying if I did not admit that WASPs have received most of the profits and prizes from this enterprise.

Two of the most promising moments in our history were concluding a horrendous Civil War that ended widely accepted commercial slavery of people of color and almost one hundred and fifty years later electing the first President with a black father. Some do not see those as high water marks and would re-write history. Our backs are indeed against the wall and I hope somehow that we wake up and remember that we, as the picture today says so well, are all in this together.

Your friend and fellow traveler,
David White