Our Uncivil War: Healing America's Broken Heart

We are living in one of the most divisive and polarizing times our country has ever experienced as the country again reels from another mass school shooting this time in Texas. The fallout from the police response and the public's reaction regarding gun safety and mental health has come back into view once again. The death of 19 children and 2 educators has left our country outraged and distraught. It is no secret that gun control is one of the most divisive issues of the modern age. The American people look to their elected officials and members of the Congress for a response and fail to find it at least at the current moment. It seems there can be no compromise on the issue of gun control. It seems we can't come together in a moment of crisis and unite to even have a conversation.

But the bigger problem here is not gun control. The bigger issue is an even greater, disturbing, and more contagious disease that lies underneath the alter of American public discourse. It is the disease of hatred, extremist takeovers of our politics, and a country that doesn't even know itself. America is broken and has been for quite some time. But if we turn the pages of American history and look to our past, we will find that we have been here before. But we'll also find we have been through more divisive times such as the Civil War and the Great Depression. The only difference as Republican strategist Frank Luntz put it was that we always had hope. But that now we are losing it. We are losing hope in the future. We are losing our country to a political establishment that has shut out most Americans in favor of the most extreme voices in our politics. A poisonous form of politics that has infected American institutions to the point where they are almost enshrined in the literal fabric of our democratic republic. But they are not and cannot become enshrined in them.

To put things into perspective let's go back in time ninety years to a time when all seemed lost. When all seemed in the balance. The date was October 29, 1929. The stock market that day opened 11 percent lower than the previous day. What would ensue was "the crash". Stocks collapsed and investors scrambled to save whatever shares they could. It was too late and the 'Roaring '20s' had ended to the sound of crashing banks. Immediately after the collapse banks failed, businesses shuttered, farms went under, homes foreclosed, factories shut down, and Hoovervilles and food lines plagued the national landscape. By 1933 unemployment had exploded to a whopping 25 percent. Americans were left stunned, many committed suicide, and more left the cities they were living in with whatever possessions they had on foot in search for work far outside the city as they and their children went hungry. The Federal Reserve's response was inadequate and the Hoover administration's lack of an adequate strategy to steer the nation out of the depression was a complete failure.

The events of 1932 would leave America outraged, scared, and nearly hopeless as they watched President Herbert Hoover order tanks and the military in broad daylight mow down World War I veterans marching for their bonuses for their service right in the streets of Washington, DC. Many were killed and makeshift camps were destroyed. The prosperity and savings of millions of Americans were wiped out. Everything Americans had built or had had now been gone. The times required serious "bold persistent experimentation" as Franklin Roosevelt said in his inaugural address on March 4, 1933. The country turned to him in their hour of national crisis and horror. Americans were watching their country come apart.

Americans were promised a "New Deal for the American People". FDR at the time didn’t define what that meant, but Americans were starving, jobless, and had lost everything. For the first time Americans looked to government to solve almost all the problems of the day. The first 100 days of FDR’s presidency saw a plethora of new programs from stabilizing farm prices, to providing jobs to the nation's youth, to providing electricity to rural areas. They would become known as the 'alphabet agencies'. FDR's disciples and supporters went out and campaigned across the country for their programs to build America back better than ever before. They listened to the people despite the division, fervor, and resistance from many in the South and elsewhere.

As the country united behind their president not everyone was pleased. Southern Democrats and Republicans had claimed that FDR was taking the country down the path of socialism and even communism. Americans had just witnessed the Soviet takeover of Russia a decade earlier and were terrified of their country turning into an American version of the Soviet Union. One by one the Supreme Court struck down some of FDR's New Deal programs and many Democrats became enemies of FDR in their own party. Republicans united against the New Deal and fought to keep business as usual even so much that exiled President Herbert Hoover contemplated running in the 1936 presidential election.

FDR when he saw that he was not getting his way with the Supreme Court drew up a plan to "Reorganize the Judiciary". This court-packing scheme tore apart Democrats and Republicans used it as ammunition against FDR and his party. It became so divisive that FDR dropped John Nance Garner from the ticket in 1940 and replaced him with Commerce Secretary Henry Wallace as his running mate. Wallace was more supportive of the New Deal and Garner had fell out of line with FDR's vision for the country. Meanwhile, racial violence plagued the country as congress went to war with each other. Calls for civil rights legislation went unheeded and race riots broke out across the United States. Jews were also being attacked and persecuted on American soil. Americans were even divided when it came to intervention in Europe. The America First-ers and those who supported helping the allies defeat the Nazi menace that was swallowing up Europe. Passions were inflamed and Americans were dying and starving at home.

Americans were torn over the direction of the country and terrified of a socialist takeover all the while the storm clouds of war in Europe were gathering. The beast of extremism had won the support of millions across Europe. As democracy became unable to deliver for Europeans, they turned to totalitarian ideologies such as Fascism and Communism as the alternative. As democracy wavered hope in the American spirit, dream, and system continued to disintegrate.

America had been the most divided it had been since the Civil War. It seemed there was no light at the end of the tunnel until at 7:00 am local time in Hawaii on December 7, 1941, the Japanese had launched an unprovoked attack on our military installation at Pearl Harbor. 2,400 Americans were killed, and 19 battleships sunk. The country realized it was not as protected as it originally thought by the two oceans that separated us from Asia and Europe. We were vulnerable and now a new danger had come to our shores. The evils of fascism were knocking on America's front door and the time had come for a call to arms in a way the country had never experienced. The vote for war was overwhelmingly bipartisan in the Senate, it was 82-0 and 388-1 in the House. And the America First committee in Congress had been disbanded. Within hours after the attack American enlistments had gone from 458,000 to 1.8 million by the end of 1941. The polarization and division of the 1930s had seemed long gone and victory became the most unifying figure of American life.

The Great Depression ended with the start of America's entry into World War II in December of 1941. Factories had come to life as millions joined the workforce. Americans from all walks of life joined together in their hour of maximum danger. What kept Americans to persevere was their hope in the future no matter how bleak. Americans became empathetic to the plight of their neighbors regarding their support over the New Deal. While many battled in congress over the proper role and size of government the people cried out for action. The lesson of the New Deal was not merely that it worked. It was that the country demanded "bold persistent experimentation". Those in high office refused to accept doing nothing as a response to a crisis the magnitude of the Great Depression.

We are divided today because we don't listen to each other. We believe our neighbors have bad intentions. We hate each other because we refuse to know each other. Time has passed since the greatest generation assumed the mantle of leadership in their hour of maximum danger. But a belief in the future is what kept many generations like theirs to keep going. The moment now requires "bold persistent experimentation" not because we'll always get it right, but because that is what the country demands. So let us keep going and assume the mantle of our own future.