AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL
O beautiful for heroes proved
In liberating strife,
Who more than their country loved,
And mercy more than life!
America! America!
May God thy gold refine,
Till all success be nobleness,
And every gain divine!
—Katherine Lee Bates & Samuel A. Ward, America the Beautiful
Where has America The Beautiful gone! Daily, we are witness to absolute, chaotic disaster! And more will unfold as campaigns unfurl and as each self-serving TWEET is offered. “Nobody likes me!” It is embarrassing, frustrating, and disgusting!! Some words that capture the unrest: pay-offs, shootings, demonstrations, not objective, untrusted, self-serving, party sorted, low functioning, sociopaths, racism, white supremacy, deconstruction, and protection by political party sorted, power worldview associates of the Federal government institution and country. We must do better and begin the long trek to evolve America The Beautiful.
O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee,
And crown thy good with brotherhood,
From sea to shining sea!
—Katherine Lee Bates & Samuel A. Ward, America the Beautiful
Some food for thought to help re-route the ship: Rachel Kleinfield and Aaron Sobel (USA Today, Friday, July 24, 2020, page7A) offer, “7 ways to reduce political polarization: Destroying the other side cannot be our goal.”
- Call out your own party: speak truth to power and challenge your own tribe.
- Avoid bad jokes: words matter, and they can perpetuate existing violence and cultivate preexisting grievances.
- Make social media kinder: remove hateful messages, reduce the spread of hateful memes, and avoid prejudiced or polarizing speech.
- Downplay the fringes and highlight the median: provide information that overturns party sorted beliefs and that reduces polarization. There may be less disagreement on policy issues than thought.
- Emphasize disagreement within parties: most policy issues have a range of opinions within a party.
- Help others imagine empathy: stories that encourage others to take the perspective of the other party can reduce prejudice.
- Avoid repeating misinformation, even to debunk it: repetition leads the brain to think things are true; and there is a tendency to seek information that agrees with how one believes.
Partisanship is shaking the mighty pillars of our democracy; and destroying the other party is not a reasonable objective. The chaos, confusion, and disaster we see unfolding daily is about destroying the other group of human beings, the other tribe. As The Honorable John Lewis offered, get in “Good Trouble” and become a master of uniting. Whether Democrat or Republican America The Beautiful is the goal!!! Let us evolve together, not apart.
O beautiful for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years; Thine alabaster cities gleam,
Undimmed by human tears!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee,
And crown thy good with brotherhood,
From sea to shining sea!
—Katherine Lee Bates & Samuel A. Ward, America the Beautiful
