A Counterpoint to President Trump's Mt. Rushmore Remarks

A few brief excerpts from President Trump’s remarks at Mt. Rushmore on July 3, 2020

“…And yet, as we meet here tonight, there is a growing danger that threatens every blessing our ancestors fought so hard for, struggled, they bled to secure.

Our nation is witnessing a merciless campaign to wipe out our history, defame our heroes, erase our values, and indoctrinate our children.

Angry mobs are trying to tear down statues of our Founders, deface our most sacred memorials, and unleash a wave of violent crime in our cities.  Many of these people have no idea why they are doing this, but some know exactly what they are doing.  They think the American people are weak and soft and submissive.  But no, the American people are strong and proud, and they will not allow our country, and all of its values, history, and culture, to be taken from them…”

---

“…No movement that seeks to dismantle these treasured American legacies can possibly have a love of America at its heart.  Can’t have it.  No person who remains quiet at the destruction of this resplendent heritage can possibly lead us to a better future.

The radical ideology attacking our country advances under the banner of social justice.  But in truth, it would demolish both justice and society.  It would transform justice into an instrument of division and vengeance, and it would turn our free and inclusive society into a place of repression, domination, and exclusion….”

You can find a transcript of the full speech here. It’s worth reading to understand the evolving rhetorical thrust for President Trump’s case for 4 more years of his presidency.

My Thoughts

I suspect that - apart from discussion about the national public health response to COVID-19 - this will be the dominating debate of 2020 (and probably beyond): how do we shape the narrative our national history, and what does that narrative say about our national/communal values?

To me, what’s striking about this whole speech is not necessarily what is included when Trump talks about the historic figures featured on Mt. Rushmore, but what isn’t included. I don’t believe that to raise concerns or demand caution when framing the legacy of our Founding Fathers constitutes weakness, indoctrination, or defamation.

If anything, our nation should own up to the worst things we’ve ever down - for doing so leads ultimately to redemption and restoration.

A Counterpoint to President Trump from Bryan Stevenson

“BROOKE GLADSTONE: You’ve said many times that ‘no person’ is the worst thing that they've ever done, and yet it seems that we as a country cannot get past the worst thing that we have ever done.
 
BRYAN STEVENSON: I don't think our nation believes that the genocide of Native people is the worst thing we've ever done or slavery is the worst thing we've ever done or lynching is the worst thing we’ve ever done or even segregation. I think we've actually created a narrative that those things weren't that bad. And not only do we not need to recover from that, we don't even need to be remorseful about that. There is no shame.
 
BROOKE GLADSTONE: But it is the worst thing we've ever done.
 
BRYAN STEVENSON: It is, in fact. And, and I want the nation to have the courage to own up to that, with the knowledge that if they own up to that they won't be condemned by it, that there is something on the other side of it, which is why we do this work. I represent a lot of people who’ve done terrible things and it’s in that context that I've come to understand that we are all more than the worst thing we’ve ever done. We are more than a country that perpetrated the genocide. We’re more than a slave society. We’re more than a lynching society. We’re more than a segregation society. But we cannot ignore that bad thing we did. And there is redemption waiting, there is recovery waiting, there is reconciliation waiting. There’s something that feels more like justice than what we have experienced in America. There is something better waiting for us, without this burden, this history of racial inequality holding us down. But we can't get there through silence, by pretending that the history doesn't exist. We’ve got to own up to it.”

This excerpt is from this audio podcast that looks to answer the question: how do we reconcile our national heritage and what can we learn from other countries that have attempted to deal with their legacies?

An image from the National Memorial for Peace and Justice

A Quote on Current Events

A passage from Between The World and Me that has been rolling through my mind and heart over the past week.

“A society, almost necessarily, begins every success story with the chapter that most advantages itself, and in America, these precipitating chapters are almost always rendered as the singular action of exceptional individuals. “It only takes one person to make a change,” you are often told. This is also a myth. Perhaps one person can make a change, but not the kind of change that would raise your body to equality with your countrymen.

The fact of history is that black people have not - probably no people ever have ever - liberated themselves strictly through their own efforts. In every great change in the lives of African Americans we see the hand of events that were beyond our individual control, events that were not unalloyed goods. You cannot disconnect our emancipation in the Northern colonies from the blood spilled in the Revolutionary War, any more than you can disconnect our emancipation from slavery in the South from the charnel houses of the Civil War, any more than you can disconnect our emancipation from Jim Crow from the genocides of the Second World War. History is not solely in our hands. And still you are called to struggle, not because it assures you victory but because it assures you an honorable and sane life...

...This is the import of the history all around us, though very few people like to think about it. Had I informed this woman that when she pushed my son, she was acting according to a tradition that held black bodies as lesser, her response would likely have been, “I am not racist.” Or maybe not. But my experience in this world has been that people who believe themselves to be white are obsessed with the politics of personal exoneration. And the word racist, to them, conjures, if not tobacco-spitting oaf, then something just as fantastic - an orc, troll, or gorgon. “I’m not racist,” an entertainer once insisted after being filmed repeatedly yelling at a heckler: “He’s a nigger! He’s a nigger!” Considering segregationist senator Strom Thurmond, Richard Nixon concluded. “Strom is no racist.” There are no racists in America, or at least non that the people who need to be white know personally. In the era of mass lynching, it was so difficult to find who, specifically, served as executioner that such deaths were often reported by the press as having happened “at the hands of persons unknown.” In 1957, the white residents of Levittown, Pennsylvania, argued for their right to keep their town segregated. “As moral, religious and law-abiding citizens,” the group wrote, “we feel that we are unprejudiced and undiscriminating in our wish to keep our community a closed community.” This was the attempt to commit a shameful act while escaping all sanction, and I raise it to show you that there was no golden era when evildoers did their business and loudly proclaimed it as such.

”We prefer to say that such people cannot exist, that there aren’t any,” writes Solzhenitsyn. “To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he’s doing is good, or else that it’s a well-considered act in conformity with natural law.” This is the foundation of the Dream - its adherents must not just believe in it but believe that it is just, believe that their possession of the Dream is the natural result of grit, honor, and good works. There is some passing knowledge of the bad old days, which, by the way, were not so bad as to have any ongoing effect on our present. The mettle that it takes to look away from the horror of our prison system, from police forces transformed into armies, from the long war against the black body, is not forged overnight. This is the practiced habit of jabbing out one’s eyes and forgetting the work of one’s hands. To acknowledge these horrors means turning away from the brightly rendered version of your country as it has always declared itself and turning toward something murkier and unknown. It is still too difficult for most Americans to do this. But that is your work. It must be, if only to preserve the sanctity of your mind. ”

— Ta-Nehisi Coats in Between The World and Me

As we enter a new era of political order and social dialogue, I hope to keep these words at the forefront of my mind.