America is Broken
The country you may have thought we were is an illusion
At 11 p.m. on Election Night, I am on the phone with my youngest son. He is fighting back tears.
“What am I supposed to tell my daughter?”
His daughter is three years old. Not old enough to understand. Still, he wants to protect her. It is instinct.
“She has fewer rights than my grandmother did. And now this.”
I don’t know what to say.
This is no longer my America. Not the one I believed in. Not the one I trusted to do the right thing. Not the one I could sometimes be proud of. No longer the one I looked to for guidance or for kindness. That country is gone. It no longer exists. That ugly side was most likely always there, but now it is out in the open. And all of this was confirmed on Election Night.
We have become crass. Devoid of morals. Devoid of heart. Less tolerant. More selfish. More ignorant. Less informed. Clueless of history. Devastatingly shortsighted. Rudderless. We are closer than ever to an autocracy, a country soon to be run by felons, con-men, egotistical billionaires, and conspiracy theorists. Intellect does not matter. Intellect is a crime. There is a clear and distinct chasm. Look at the election maps. The chasm is right there in front of us.
A majority of the American electorate has chosen the cost of bread over democracy. The cost of Cheerios is more important than women’s rights, gay rights, fairness, the rule of law, or empathy. We are a country clearly blinded by nostalgia, longing for a mythical time when we were once “great” — that is if “great” means a time when Blacks couldn’t drink from the same water fountain as Whites, a time when police beat protestors without consequence, a time when little girls were discouraged from believing they could change the world.
We are no longer a country that looks forward. Maybe we never truly have been. We look inward instead, inward toward only ourselves. What is in it for me? What can I get out of this? How can I get mine? It’s likely we have always been this way, and now that selfishness is legitimized. We have lost our moral center.
Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.
—W.B. Yeats
Some say I’m overreacting. Some say I’m being dramatic. Some say I’m being hyperbolic. Trump and his followers are an aberration.
Tell that to my son and his daughter.
I could mask my feelings and grasp for hope. I could search and find some silver lining. It might be the only way to stay positive in the darkest of times. But to dismiss the dread would be a mistake. Masking tragedy only begets more tragedy; blindness not only negates sight, but it also negates reality. When you fail to see it as it is, you fail yourself and your own innate sense of the trouble in front of you. There is no denying—America has made a perilous choice.
This meme has been popping up on social media a lot since Election Night, one that reminds us that hope is a strong emotion, permitting resilience.
I’ll do my best to believe these words, to live them, too. But I cannot deny that my spirit has dimmed. I cannot deny that the “shining city on a hill” is forever tarnished. I am far from religious. I lean more toward Buddhism if I had to choose. But I do know this: That phrase about America and the “shining city” is wrongly attributed to Ronald Reagan and his belief in American exceptionalism. He didn’t come up with it. Truth is, he stole it, like so many politicians before and after him. The phrase comes from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. And it wasn’t about America or any other earthly country or place. It was about the “people of God.” They are the shining city on a hill. And it’s not about financial prosperity or military might or all the other things we think of when we think of “American exceptionalism.” Among the people Jesus is said to have blessed from the Mount are the poor, the meek, and the persecuted. Scholars say the Sermon is not a call for America or any nation to be strong, or prosperous, or even a moral light. When Jesus spoke from the Mount, he commanded us to be more like God and love our enemies.
In the coming days, I’ll be working on that.
David W. Berner is the author of several books of award-winning fiction and memoir. His latest, Daylight Saving Time: The power of growing older is available now. His novella, American Moon will be published by Regal House Publishing in 2026.
This morning, I've written so many words and torn up just as many pages. I have dug my pen so deeply that the mark is embedded on the pages following. While I searched for something easy to understand pertaining to economic choices, you write it, "A majority of the American electorate has chosen the cost of bread over democracy."
I feel swallowed in darkness, the dim light so far away, and what I hope is that my words, today angry, will settle to pen hope and what can be done on any given day. Otherwise, that loaf of bread will choke us of breath.
I kept hoping this wouldn’t happen. Now that it has, like so many, I am in disbelief that America could hand the reins back to this a mysogynistic, corrupt, narcissist whose only real reason for wanting to be president is to escape what he deserved: prison. I am not American, but my daughter and husband live in the US and are beside themselves wondering what the next 4 years will bring. Heaven help America. Trump won’t!