America’s Skeletons Keep Rearing Their Centuries Old Head

 When I was in elementary school, I fell in love with the United States and everything that we were taught that it stands for: Life, Freedom, and Happiness. I loved American History so much that I would read ahead in our Social Studies textbook. While my teacher was talking about Boston Massacre, I would be reading about the Battle of Yorktown. There was a book in the school library about all the Presidents in our history up to Jimmy Carter. The year was 1979 and I had dreams of becoming President one day. In fact, I wanted to be the first Jewish President. I had no idea of lobbyists, party politics, or political action committees. I was nine years old, and I believed so much in the freedoms that our country gave us. The alternative was communism and living under the Iron Curtin of the USSR.  

As I grew up, my views changed. The more books on American history I read, the more I realized that our nation has many skeletons and bad habits that we can’t seem to shake. I have even experienced some of it myself with antisemitic slurs and gestures being thrown my way more times than I can count.  However, our history has shown us that for 250 years America has been built on a dream of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all. People from all around the world are drawn to the promise of what America can eventually become. 

 

During the antebellum period of our history, as the inhumane practice of slavery prevailed in the southern half our country, there was a growing abolitionist movement in the other half.  White Americans and freed slaves who believed that slavery was wrong and risked their safety to speak at conventions or write articles in newspapers denouncing this evil. If abolitionists did not speak up would the original Republican Party have been formed in the 1850s and would that party have included a man named Abraham Lincoln?

 

During the latter part of the 19^th century and early 20^th century, women marched, spoke, protested, wrote articles demanding the right to vote.  Women were beaten, spit at, and put in prison but they didn’t give up. The suffragettes kept going and along the way gained much needed support from men who believed that women were and would continue to be an important part of the fabric of the United States. If these men never stood up for what was right and provided support for the suffragettes, how much longer would it have taken for women to gain the vote and eventually gain other freedoms such as the right to have a checking account in their own name. 

 

The same can be said during the civil rights protests to end southern segregation. The courage of Dr. King and John Lewis inspired the courage of thousands and thousands of Americans living in the north to join them in their fight for liberty. The supporters from the north had diverse backgrounds including white, black, Jew, and Christian. They knew racism was an evil and that the promise of America belongs to everyone. Without that belief and their proactivity would the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 passed?

 

I turned thirty at the beginning of the millennium and I believed that the prejudices that plagued America’s past had begun to erode.  Interracial & inter religious relationships and marriages were becoming more common as it wasn't considered taboo in society anymore. I worked with companies that were headed up by men and women of all different backgrounds. Not everything was perfect, but it was a lot better than it was fifty or sixty years prior. Progress was being made to the point that the first African American was elected President in 2008, Barack Obama. I really felt in my heart of hearts that the United States was finally getting close to becoming that shiny city on the hill. 

 

President Obama was a transcending figure. He united millions and millions of Americans and in 2008, he made us believe that a better more inclusive American society for the 21^st Century was attainable. President Obama’s background and middle-class upbringing represented what the fabric of America looked like in the new millennium. The braking chains of stereotypical norms of the last 250 years was in the process of taking place during the Obama Presidency. However, our nation’s biggest skeleton was not buried deep enough and racism in the form of Donald Trump and his Make America Great Again movement came out of the shadows.  

 

As the United States population grows, our society becomes more diverse with citizens who are from different backgrounds and religions. The consequence is that in a few years, the race that has been in the majority for the entire existence of America will become the minority and thirty-five percent of Americans who are both white and Christian have a big problem with our nation becoming diversified.  The result is for the last 10 years they have hitched their wagon to the MAGA movement so as to not lose that power. 

 

Somehow, this racist, misogynistic, anti-Semitic, guilty on 34 counts felon has divided our country so much that he was elected President twice. He did have help from Vladimir Putin the first time and Elon Musk the second. To preserve white supremacy, Donald Trump is trying to back track on all the progress that our nation has made and take us back to the Gilded Age.  He is doing this by dissolving our post WWII relationships with our international partners, using ICE and the DOJ as his personal Gestapo, while lighting the Constitution on fire. 

 

Unfortunately for Trump and MAGA, most Americans reject his platform and vision for the future of the United States.  Trump’s policies and actions are mean spirited and meant to scare people into compliance. They don’t put America first and as with other key moments in our history there is a large group of pro-democracy Americans who are not complying and protesting non-violently. Each protest gets larger and larger and will keep going until the Trump regime is dismantled and leaders are elected & appointed in all three branches of government who honor the Constitution before party. 

 

 President Theodore Roosevelt once said, “Justice consists of not being neutral between right and wrong but finding out the right and upholding it, wherever found, against the wrong.” Now is not the time to stay neutral.