San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Best and worst of America
The dates are written in blood in our nation’s history: Dec. 7, 1941, Sept. 11, 2001, Jan. 6, 2021. When you travel the journey into the universe of octogenarians, as I did a while back, you can recall countless personal and shared moments of those yesterdays. Moments of pride, of fear, of anger, of grief, of shame, of hope, of joy, of laughter, and, yes, of prayer.
And you remember the words from our leaders.
President Franklin Roosevelt told us about the day “which will live in infamy,” and then assured us that “With confidence in our armed forces — with the unbounding determination of our people — we will gain the inevitable triumph — so help us God.”
President George W. Bush, who stood amid the wreckage in New York, spoke of those who died: “We will remember every rescuer who died in honor. We will remember every family that lives in grief. We will remember the fire and ash, the last phone calls, the funerals of the children.”
On Jan. 6, Presidentelect Joe Biden said what we didn’t hear from the White House: “Today is a reminder, a painful one, that democracy is fragile. To preserve it requires people of good will, leaders with the courage to stand up, who are devoted not to the pursuit of power and personal interest at any cost, but to the common good.”
Then there was this from President Donald Trump’s Jan. 6 tweet: “These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long. Go home with love & in peace. Remember this day forever!”
No, you can’t forget the pictures and stories of the wars in Europe and the Pacific, of the horrors of Auschwitz, Buchenwald and other Nazi camps, of the mushroom clouds over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, of people jumping to their deaths from the World Trade Center, of the bravery of those on United Flight 93, of Capitol Police being beaten senseless by insurrectionists, of the vice president and members of Congress fleeing for safety while a noose swung outside.
And of the previously unthinkable, a Confederate flag being waved inside the halls of our Capitol.
Surely, you can add so many other jarring days to the list from the past 80plus years, including the day the coronavirus invaded our lives and has since killed more than 500,000 Americans and millions around the world.
Or when President John Kennedy, and later his brother Robert and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., were assassinated, or when the space shuttle Challenger exploded before an audience of many millions. When the darkness of Watergate was finally revealed in full on the front pages of the Washington Post. Bloody Sunday in Selma, four Black children killed in a Birmingham church bombing, Medgar Evers gunned down at his home, three young civil rights workers slain in Philadelphia, Miss.
When young Americans went to war again in Korea and Vietnam and Iraq and Afghanistan. When we witnessed Latino children being separated from their parents and being held in cages. The increase of antiSemitism and antiAsian American actions across our land, or the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Stephon Clark, Eric Garner, Rayshard Brooks, and others, Black men and women killed by police. Or the tragedies at Kent State and Jackson State during Vietnam protests, the days of rage surrounding the 1968 Chicago Democratic convention, members of Congress attempting to whitewash the brutal attack on our home of our democracy.
But there also is the other side of the coin: joy.
Just a few: When the first Black president stood before a crowd of thousands in Chicago’s Grant Park and repeated “yes, we can” for the world to hear, or when a man of decency and empathy returned those values to the Oval Office with a Black woman as his vice president. When Neil Armstrong took a step on the moon or when a rover landed on Mars. When Capt. Chesley Sullenberger landed United 1549 in the water, the “Miracle on the Hudson,” or that celebratory kiss in Times Square to signal peace, or the Supremes saying yes to samesex marriage.
And certainly lots of awe: The coming of jet airplanes, television, cable, the internet, Facebook and Google and Microsoft, Jesse Owens, Muhammad Ali, Joe Montana and Tom Brady, the fourminute mile, Seabiscuit and Citation, the NBA and NFL, an avalanche of technology, the golden years of newspapers, the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act (which is being trampled on by the courts and the GOP), medical miracles, a young man facing the tanks in Tiananmen Square, a young woman placing a flower in a soldier’s rifle in Washington, Hemingway and Baldwin, Morrison and Didion, Elvis and the Beatles, a revolution of music and art and literature, and so much more.
Now we are left to wonder, what side of the coin will land faceup most often over the next eight decades, or even next week? Sadness or joyfulness?
Excuse me, it’s time for another moment of prayer.
Now we are left to wonder, what side of the coin will land faceup most often over the next eight decades, or even next week?