Our American Crisis<\/p>\n
Today I was watching \u201csecond to second\u201d coverage of the anniversary of the Charlottesville race violence of last year.\u00a0 Charlottesville has declared itself closed to demonstration and protests of any kind this year, so the white nationalists have determined that they will take their message to Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n
They organized in Fairfax, Virginia, and drove by car with police escort to the Vienna Metro Station.\u00a0Then they took a (single) reserved Metro car into DC. By the way, if you can fit a whole protest into a Metro car, then it probably isn\u2019t much of a protest.\u00a0 Hundreds, perhaps thousands of counter-protestors awaited them, as the white nationalists made their way from the \u201cFoggy Bottom\u201d Metro Station to Lafayette Park across from the White House.\u00a0 The counter-protestors point is already made; the \u201canniversary protest\u201d is now just a First Amendment exercise.<\/p>\n
This is after a week where Americans have had some reason to question whether our leaders are racist or not.\u00a0President Trump has called black men who criticized him, Don Lemmon of CNN and LeBron James of the LA Lakers, \u201cstupid,\u201d Maxine Waters a black woman who opposes him \u00a0as\u201clow IQ,\u201d and Omarosa, a black woman who was his former staffer a \u201clowlife.\u201d The Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency tried to \u201cspirit away\u201d Hispanic immigrants who were asking for amnesty in Federal Court (the judge ordered them returned to the US,) and a Fox News Commentator (Laura Ingraham) told us that the migrants have \u201ctaken away\u201d the America we all \u201cloved.\u201d<\/p>\n
So while we are still a nation dealing with a backlash to the momentous changes of the past twenty years, the paltry turnout of \u201chate\u201d in Washington today may give us some measure of reassurance.<\/p>\n
Last night I had the privilege, thanks to my brother-in-law, of watching the musical, Hamilton.\u00a0 <\/em>Lin-Manuel Miranda has written the striking saga of an immigrant, Alexander Hamilton, and his impact on our nation.\u00a0 In song and rap, it covers the idealism of the American Revolution, and the terrible crises of American infancy.\u00a0 Farmers versus City dwellers, North versus South, Slave versus Free, Strong Government versus Weak; the founders struggled with immense problems.\u00a0And, while they all \u201ctook their shot,\u201d it wasn\u2019t clean, or agreeable.<\/p>\n When John Adams ran for his second term in office, Thomas Jefferson, the Vice President, ran against him.\u00a0And while in those times it was considered \u201cunacceptable\u201d for a candidate for President to campaign, partisan newspapers took up the fight, not unlike today where we have differing \u201cnews outlets\u201d supporting one side or the other.\u00a0 And while the Democratic-Republicans called Adams, the author of the Alien and Sedition Acts, a tyrant who wanted to be King; the Federalists had a much more personal attack.\u00a0 To the tune of \u201cYankee Doodle Dandy\u201d a song was composed to \u201cMontecellian Sally,\u201d referring to Jefferson\u2019s slave and paramour, Sally Hemings.<\/p>\n America has been through tremendous crises.\u00a0 And while we haven\u2019t seen the intellect and power of post-Revolutionary America (Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison et al) rise yet on our current crisis, you can already see the beginnings of the \u201cAmerican Exceptionalism\u201d we have grown to expect.\u00a0There will be those who \u201cRise Up\u201d to lead our country forward.<\/p>\n And it isn\u2019t just Democrats.\u00a0While Republicans seem bound and gagged by the Trump base and tweet, there are still a few who lead forward, even some who have not already given up seeking office.\u00a0 Senator Richard Burr of North Carolina, is quietly leading the Senate Intelligence Committee to find real and honest results in their Russia investigation (yes, a distant relation to Aaron Burr, Hamilton\u2019s protagonist.)\u00a0John Kasich, Governor of Ohio continues to speak out against the abuses of the Trump Administration.<\/p>\n And as we watch Democrats begin the long, drawn-out process of jockeying for the 2020 Presidential nomination, there are those doing the hard intellectual work of finding the truth, without making too much political capital from it.\u00a0 Congressman Adam Schiff of California, Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, and Congressman Jerry Nadler of New York are pressing for fairness and truthfulness, and in January, may well be leading us through this Presidential crisis.<\/p>\n