The hard work of healing

It will take courage, empathy and lots of hard work.

When you fall off your bike and fracture a bone, graze your hand and elbow, you need to rest so you can heal.

When America has to heal after a bitter two decades of partisan division, we’re going to have to summon some courage and put some very hard work into the healing process. Our empathy muscle has withered, while our angry has been on steroids and working out daily.

Most Americans are good people. We live in an incredible country. Its natural beauty, its sheer scale and expanse, and its tumultuous history leading to its global dominance in the 20th century, and the influence America has had on humanity, all of this adds up to a nation that must heal its wounds. America must recover from this place and find her soul once again, even if it means accepting that China will overtake in GDP and military might, and that other countries may enjoy a higher GDP per capita, a higher score on some other global economic or social index. So what.

There are many who dislike America. Putin and his fossil fuel kleptocracy have obvious reasons to want to sabotage the US. Islamic extremists see America as the bastion of demonic decadence that their fanaticism opposes, so clearly they are duty bound to lambast all things American. Beyond the extremists, the other haters are just envious…