Please do not give up on the power to heal, to mend what is broken, to find community with those who seem distant and alien.
The magnitude of the fight for our democratic values cannot be understated. The level of dangerous vitriol and hate cannot be normalized or minimized. Those who stoke divisions within our nation must be countered and defeated. But in doing so we must hold on to our own humanity.
Throughout my life in journalism I have covered far too many stories to count where I have seen the blazes of anger soothed, where those on opposite sides of the battle lines have thrown down their weapons and come together. Today Germany and Japan are close allies, and Americans are welcomed in Vietnam. In covering the Civil Rights movement, I saw minds changed. The movement on LGBTQ rights, while far from complete, has been startling in its rapidly.
We are a nation riven by fear and anger. We see that the undercurrents of racism remain strong and are gushing into the open. We see policies of cruelty. But I do not believe that most Americans want to accept this. We need to find ways to reach out to each other and not give up on the idea of a more perfect union.
There was never a more serious tear to our nation than the Civil War. It was a fight over the the evils of slavery. And the level of bloodshed is still unfathomable. But in the end, albeit in victory, President Lincoln famously reached out to heal.
"With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."
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