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| photo credit: me |
Hot take: The civil war was a divisive time in American
history.
That’s not really a hot take. I called it a hot take to get
your attention. People love hot takes. Or they hate hot takes. Regardless, they
read hot takes. Here’s another one.
Hot take: 2024 is a divisive time in American history.
The wedge being driven among Americans today is not as wide
or as sharp as the wedge that drove our forefathers apart. But it is wide, and
it is sharp. We are coalescing around our political tribes in ways that go
beyond mere political affiliation or philosophical ideals. We are being told to
hate our neighbors if they don’t side with us. We are being told that they are
evil. Rebels and anarchists and baby-murders and fascists. We are told these
things, but, on the whole, these things are lies.
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| photo credit: Matti Blume |
I was in DC this week for work. While there, I visited the Lincoln Memorial. It sits due west of the U.S. Capitol, that domed building where laws are made and important arguments are had and where senators and representatives sometimes nap while their colleagues get air time on C-SPAN. The U.S. Capitol and the Lincoln Memorial are separated by the National Mall, a long, grassy strip of land about a block wide.
My favorite way to get around the National Mall is by bicycle. You can rent a three-speed step through bike from Capital Bikeshare at stations all over DC. Swipe your credit card or use your app, and the stations will unlock a bike from its slot in the station so you can go about your important business. When you’re where you want to be, you find a station and dock the bike. Done.
Let’s start just west of the U.S. Capitol. I want to take
you to the Lincoln Memorial to talk about his second inaugural address, but I
want you to get in the right mindset first. A bike ride always does the trick
for me.
There are wide gravel paths that run along the north and
south sides of the National Mall. As we ride west, there are people jogging on
the trails, tourists walking slowly in clumps, and people erecting small tents
for an event of some sort. There seems to always be some sort of event on the
mall. Trees line the path, and beyond the trees museums and grand government
buildings stand impressively. We pass the red brick castle of the Smithsonian
Institute, the sandstone curves of the Native American museum, and the
impressive columns of the National Gallery of Art. DC aims to impress, and it
does an admirable job.
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| photo credit: me |
The gravel trail ends, and we cross a few streets before the short climb up to the Washington Monument. The obelisk sits on top of a grassy hill and is surrounded by American flags that flap and flutter in the wind. The path is swarming with people. From the top of the hill, we look west and see the World War II Monument, then the reflecting pool, and finally Lincoln’s memorial in the distance. The air is crisp and the sun is shining. We continue.
There is a fountain at the center of the World War II
memorial. On the west side of the memorial is a wall covered in over four
thousand stars. Below the stars, carved into the stone, are the words, “Here we
mark the price of freedom.” Each star represents one hundred people who died
fighting for freedom in that war. The loss of lives is too big for me to
picture. We move on.
The reflecting pool is a long, rectangular pool that
stretches between the World War II Memorial and Lincoln’s memorial. It is
shallow and lined on both sides by paths and trees. It is a beautiful and
peaceful place. Sunlight filters through the trees and dapples the ground. Wind
rustles the leaves. It is a good place to walk slowly and think and feel and
pray.
We pass the pool and dock our bikes. We walk up the steps
toward the memorial. You cannot really see Lincoln from the stops. The exterior
of the memorial is white marble and dazzles the eye in the sunlight. Lincoln is
in the shadows, behind the pillars that serve as the doorway to the memorial.
The spot where Martin Luther King Junior gave his famous “I have a dream” speech
is engraved into the steps. Reading his name reminds me of another time when America
was divided, straining at the seams. The steps turn to marble. They are no
longer flat. They have grooves warn in them by the feet of thousands upon
thousands of visitors.
As you step from the sunlight into the shadow of the
memorial, it feels like you’re stepping into a holy place. Lincoln sits on his
massive chair, dominating the space. To his right, the words of the Gettysburg
Address are carved into the wall. To his left, the words of his second
inaugural address are carved. In the text of these speeches we find the heart
of a man who found himself in the unenviable position of leading a country as
it was actively trying to tear itself apart, as brother killed brother, as
America bled.
What strikes me about Lincoln’s words is his lack of hatred
for his enemy, for people who would celebrate his death. In the second
inaugural address, he struggles with the idea of God and punishment for our
country’s sins. He is a man unsure if his country will survive, unsure if he
will be the last president of the United States of America. You can hear the late-night
prayers and doubt in his opening words in the Gettysburg Address.
“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure."
-Abraham Lincoln
As you stand there, reading those words and thinking about
hate and love and unity and division, I want you to pause and listen. Despite
being a self-proclaimed temple, and despite the sign requesting silence out of
respect, the Lincoln memorial is awash in the chatter of excited tourists.
Shoes clack on the marble. There are languages from all over the world spoken
in that place by people of every color of the rainbow. It is awash in life.
It is easy to be indignant about the noise, but I think Lincoln would have liked it. Here is proof that the experiment he tried so hard to save can work. This wonderful country is full of people from every walk of life bound together not by heritage but by the idea of a nation conceived in liberty.
It is my prayer that we, like Lincoln, can look past the
aggressions of our fellow Americans, the blues if you’re red and the reds if
you’re blue, and see people who are in need of love. It is my prayer that we
become a people governed not by hate but by understanding. It is my prayer that
we stop listening to the hate mongers and start listening to each other.
I want to end with the last words from Lincoln’s second inaugural
address because, in the coming months and years, we will have relationships to
heal and emotional wounds to bind.
“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.”
-Abraham Lincoln
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