The Soul of America: The Battle for our Better Angels

 

The Soul of America: The Battle for our Better Angels – by Jon Meacham

As a citizen of the United States in the first couple of decades of the 21^st century, it’s awfully tempting to look around at the political environment and think “How can things possibly be worse?”  When Donald Trump became the 45^th president, author Jon Meacham probably decided to take a deep breath, not panic, and remind the citizens that although this seems like a preposterous joke, our country has been through this sort of nightmare before, and good has always prevailed at the end of whatever seamless catastrophe the nation seems to be facing.

Despite what many people today think about our country’s past, America was NEVER “great” as Mr. Trump claims. Oh sure, we’ve done some great things, but that should never give us a free pass for the many transgressions we’ve made as a nation. Yes, people will always be tainted by the atmosphere around them – but when we look back on our history, we shouldn’t try to cover up our sins.  Confessing our sins, as Jesus commanded, would be much more appropriate and do a whole lot of good.  Sadly, a lot of people who claim to be followers of Jesus still haven’t figured that out yet. They would rather “cover up” than “confess”. No, we’ve never been a “Christian” nation, yet Christians have always made up the majority of the population, and yet after almost 250 years as a nation, we still haven’t figured out how to be Christ-like. We’d rather wave a large American flag, keep foreigners out of our country, and tell poor people that it’s their own fault for being poor.

Now, what I’ve described isn’t really what this book is about, but I would argue it’s definitely an underlying current if one reads between the lines.  This book describes in detail our country’s faults, especially when it comes to racial matters.  There are times when the author seems to want to tackle other sins, but the book always comes back to race. The Women’s Suffrage moment during the 1910s is only briefly discussed. On the other hand, McCarthyism of the 1950s does get a lot of page space here.  What’s a bit unique (and scary) about the communist scare of the early 1950s, is that the author doesn’t really go into specifics about the witch hunt, but rather WHY Joe McCarthy decided to create such an invisible monster to begin with. McCarthy’s reason? Politics. Pure and simple. McCarthy knew that he never had to do deep homework. All he had to do was point fingers, scream a lot, intimidate people, and the ignorant masses would fall right in behind him. One can easily see how, as a country, we haven’t learned from these mistakes. All one has to do is see how today’s individuals such as Majorie Taylor Greene and Franklin Graham have learned to prey upon America’s gullibility and stupidity.

But again, it’s mainly the racial issues. As far back as Reconstruction, through the prominent years of when the KKK was “legitimate”, all the way up to the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, we read about all of it here. It’s mostly embarrassing and unpleasant, but Meacham’s goal is to show us that we DO eventually beat the ignorance, the hatred, and the ugliness that, sadly, enraptures so many fearful U.S. citizens.

I should add as a postscript that this book was written before Donald Trump (with the help of Fox “News”) managed to convince many that the presidential election was “stolen” and try to overthrow the U.S. government via a coup on January 6, 2021. Hindsight tells us that his chances of succeeding were actually higher than many feared.  Even as I type this review (February 2022), there are many who still stand behind this idiotic tyrant and dismiss the whole episode as trivial.  From what I can tell, calmer heads are slowly starting to prevail, and Trump’s popularity seems to be slightly waning. Let’s hope the momentum continues. Let’s hope that there are REAL angels watching over us and giving us far more grace than we deserve as a country. Let’s hope we can learn. Let’s hope that we can somehow put these episodes behind us. We can hope. And pray.