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What Would It Feel Like to Be Optimistic Right Now?
Donald Trump invoked faith as a blunt instrument. But faith is what will get us through this year.
President Donald Trump’s acceptance speech topping off the Republican National Convention last night compounded surrealities: on the South Lawn of the White House, with an army of flags behind him and a sea of unmasked people seated together — after millions of Americans have sacrificed togetherness with loved ones for the past six months. It was an abdication of presidential norms, a flouting of the Hatch Act, an upturning of public health guidance, and an insult to those who’ve died in this pandemic. It was a night when God Almighty was invoked. It was a speech full of lies.
It’s been a year of grief and loss for many Americans. 2020 has been the sort of year that carries a mythic quality; it’s a cosmic test, the darkest timeline, the year from hell. Last night, on PBS’s convention coverage, presidential historian Michael Beschloss warned us that the way symbols of our country had been mixed with those of Trump’s political movement is “what happens in autocracies.”
We’ve been stacking trauma on trauma: a global pandemic, more than 180,000 Americans dead, 5.84 million diagnosed with Covid-19, elderly family members isolated, children’s school routines destroyed, careers up in a snuff of business closure. It’s catastrophic hurricanes and wildfires. It’s been the graphic witness of the country’s systemic racism laid bare in a knee to the neck, a killing in her own home, followed and killed while jogging, seven shots in front of his children. It’s also the wash of tiny disappointments; the birthdays that became just another Zoom meeting; not being able to dine in at a favorite restaurant; not being able to hug a friend hello.
In all the chaos and death, where does one find the energy to keep going or the light to energize oneself to face a new day in 2020?
Faith helps, it seems. By this, I do not mean the sort of posturing that no longer veils Christian nationalism within campaign speeches or bastardizes scripture, as Vice President Mike Pence did, substituting Old Glory into verses from 2 Corinthians and Hebrews, deleting out Jesus.
