THE AMERICAN POSEIDON ADVENTURE

A friend recently sent me an essay about how to hold fast to one’s values while engaging pragmatically with people who hold deeply opposed views. My takeaway was a reminder to try to remove the “edge” from my writing and from how I engage others. That is easier said than done. It is difficult not to let anger intrude when one repeatedly witnesses injustice and inhumane behavior from a president, his followers, and senior government officials.

The killing of Renee Good, and the subsequent efforts by Trump supporters to justify the actions of Jonathan Ross, efforts echoed and reinforced by Trump, Noem, and Bondi, feel like a bridge too far. Yet history reminds us that even when a battle named A Bridge Too Far ended in failure at Arnhem, the war itself was ultimately won because perseverance replaced despair. That, I suppose, is the lesson: if we believe in America and in what it can become, we must persist.

Carl Sandburg understood this well. He wrote that “America is always becoming,” that it is “a nation… a promise… a song in the making,” and that “America is an experiment.” This weekend we mark the January 15, 1929, birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who carried that idea forward. King had a dream, not a fantasy, but a demand, that America live up to its promise that all are created equal. His vision called for voting rights, equal justice, fair wages, and peace at home and abroad. In that sense, little has changed. Sandburg set the table; Dr. King gave us the menu.

Yesterday, I visited Ellis Island, where from 1882 through the early twentieth century immigrants arriving at the Port of New York were processed. It is a profoundly moving experience. Seeing what they endured to get here, and imagining what America represented to them, leaves one both proud and deeply sad. Proud of the country they believed America could be; sad when comparing that vision to our present reality. Many of them fled famine, poverty, pogroms, and political persecution, conditions not unlike those faced by many who cross our borders today in search of a better life.

There is no denying that immigration must be better managed. But there must be a more humane approach, one that seeks solutions rather than provocation, that does not incite violence or rely on cruelty as policy. The current approach, focused on removal and deterrence alone, but fails to address America’s actual needs. We require immigrants to keep our society and economy vibrant, even as we seek balance and order.

So, we would do well to remember Arnhem and to take heart from what Sandburg taught and what Dr. King practiced. America has always been unfinished. The question is whether we are still willing to do the hard, patient work of becoming.

RESISTS!!! & EDUCATE!!!