The Secret
by Russ Cushman
So many people, even some of my relatives, are talking smack these days about finally being fed up... not with the riots or crime in the streets or the ineptitude of local governments to deal with these things...but with conservatives...or any people like me who support our president (Trump). They blame this one man for all of the civil unrest, the breakdowns in the urban areas, especially Democratically run major cities, and even the deaths from a global pandemic. They blame us too for supporting him. And they speak as if this new, righteous intolerance of the president and his ilk is absolutely reasonable.
They watch the major networks and trust that they are sifting reliable information, and well, according to them it's time to ratchet up the condemnation and persecution of all Republicans and their constituency. They speak with the solemn, self-assured haughtiness of Puritans about to round up the witches. “It's too bad about them... those who disagree with us, those who have totally different sources of information; life's wastrels who have taken the wrong path, who have somehow come to such wrong conclusions, and now endanger our carefully constructed paradigm.”
The “Left” reacts to the latest actions taken by the president as the last straw, even though in reality he drew that short straw the day he was elected, when President Obama and VP Biden went to work immediately to totally discredit him, in the process misusing their powers and the once impeccable lever of the FBI...and others. Thus three and a half years of baseless accusations which they cleverly seeded, and the subsequent fruitless investigations, have created a pervasive distrust and suspicion... Mere suspicions then reinforced by the Media who whipped up every accusation, usually derived from undisclosed sources, and then spoon fed hungry, impressionable intellects. And they have shaped many false conclusions, (perception is reality) which have sent these high-minded reformers marching, demonstrating, some rioting, some even disowning their own relatives.
It is impossible, to my greatest frustration, to change the mind of a person against his or her will... regardless of what facts may exist, so I will give the conservative arguments a rest.
Here is another angle which I wish my self-satisfied relatives would consider. What is missing from our country and what is impossible to form unity without...forgiveness. The kind that is the product of grace...first embodied by God's grace, defined by many Christians as “unmerited favor.” Sadly, tragically, America has lost its use of forgiveness and a close relative, forgetting.
The old, oft-used quip in our American mindset used to be “Forgive – and forget.”
When Iron Tail, Blue Horse, Little Bull, Red Shirt, Little Chief and Flies Above rode with Buffalo Bill in The Wild West Show in London, they were forgiving and forgetting...more or less. Each had his own blend of these precious values. When Civil War veterans from both sides met and broke bread together after that terrible war, they were forgiving and forgetting. The country as a whole could not have healed and prospered without these things.
When the Japanese people went to work and built an enviable new economy after the horrors they suffered at the end of WWII...under American Democracy, they were forgiving and forgetting.
When Jack Roosevelt Robinson led his race into professional baseball, they did not take a knee...they swung away. They knew better than anyone about apartheid...but they still embraced the opportunity to change the face- and the future of America. And they did. White kids like me were soon collecting baseball cards with their faces on them... and they were heroes in our impressionable eyes. And it was because they entered the game with dignity, and forgiving and forgetting, changed history and helped correct injustice in our country. Soon every sport had its own Jackie Robinson, and America was never the same. When Sammy Davis Jr. ran with the “Rat Pack,” he did the same for the American entertainment industry. And on and on it went.
What was their secret?
enough