This is My Country?

So I like the song but now I wonder just what country this is.  I mean I understand that Hillary has baggage or at least perceived baggage, which in the media drive-sound bit culture, is baggage.  And I think I somewhat understand that a good deal of Americans are disappointed in government and its inability to actually govern, but what has that disappointment done to our judgment.

How can so many people look past Donald Trump and see only their frustration?  I am not worried about Trump. He is an entertainer and I did not think a very good one, but I must be wrong.  I am concerned about so many people who will follow his lead.  Where would he lead us?

He wants a nation of walls and labels.  His main discourse is to encourage fear and a kind of thinking that is solitary and often mean spirited.  Just what is "my country?"  Have we become an individualized bunch of people who have no sense of the common good and have we lost our willingness to think beyond our own needs?  To live in community has always taken an ability to listen and compromise.  Our country needs that in order to govern. 

Mr. Trump says he knows how to "fix" things.  This is not a reality show and fixing is not firing that which does not please you.  I am amazed at the magnitude of this kind of thinking.  There are more upset people out there than I ever thought.  As a professor on a panel I participated in recently said, "I am not worried about November 8, I am worried about November 9."

What will we do to find some common ground for the common good?  I want our country to be one made up of individuals who look beyond individual needs and concerns.  That is why we need the great religions of the world, all of whom have at their core the profession that life is a gift and that we are stewards of that gift.

I just returned from Washington DC and read many of those sayings of those who founded our nation, many of whom at great personal sacrifice.  There was a nobility to our founding that seems lost amidst a me-driven, don't take what is mine, attitude.   Do not bite at the bait of pleasure, till you know there is no hook beneath it. Thomas Jefferson

I looked at a painting of George Washington refusing to be "crowned emperor" but rather resigning his military commission so that a government "by the people and for the people" could be formed.  He put the country above himself.  He recognized that power needed to shared not possessed as a prize.

I pray that on November 9 we start learning from our frustrations rather than giving in to them....