It's Raining. But It's Still the USA

The Boston Globe

'It's raining, but it's still the beach!"

My cousin, Terry, posted these words on Facebook last week along with a photo of her and a friend smiling under a gray sky with a darker gray Atlantic Ocean in the background.

Both women are wearing scarves and jackets. Their hair is windblown. They are getting wet. It's not the kind of day either had hoped for.

And I thought, looking at her photo and reading her words, isn't this true for America, too? It's raining, but this is still the USA. Despite all that's been dredged up by the election. Despite so much nastiness and name calling and negativity. Despite the sudden sea change, isn't this still the land of the free? A country that's better than what it seems to be right now?

Terry could have sat in her car and cursed her bad luck. She could have Facebooked, "I came 3,000 miles for this?" But she didn't let the weather defeat her. She zipped up her jacket, got out of the car, breathed in the cool, fresh air, smiled as the sea gulls cawed and appreciated what the rain couldn't take away.

Come Thanksgiving, the annual day of giving thanks, maybe we should do the same. Count our blessings. Appreciate what we have.

And then think of ways to protect what we have.

I don't believe that every person who voted for Donald Trump is a bigot. I believe that many Trump supporters voted simply for change. And change won.

But so did the bigots.

Americans have disagreed before. We have been on different sides of history and presidents and social issues many times. This is how democracy works. It's messy and it's loud and it's frustrating and confrontational and divisive.

But democracy has never before been so rife with disrespect and meanness and hate.

I blame Donald Trump for this. He set the tone. He gave all the haters not just a green light, but a wink, too. And they've come out of the shadows en masse.

But Donald Trump did not create the hate that is pouring down on us now. This hate has been around for a long, long time. Only it's been camouflaged and hidden and denied.

And that's been a problem because it is impossible to fight what people insist does not exist. And so it seems that the silver lining in these most fractured of times is this: The hate is out there, on tongues, on walls, in words and in actions, for every one to see.

The Southern Poverty Law Center is a nonprofit organization that tracks hate groups and hate crimes. Usually in a six-month period there are some 300 reported hate crimes. Last week it posted that in the six days following the election, there were more than 315. These numbers were corroborated by the Council on American-Islamic Relations. One can only imagine the number of unreported "incidents."

Here's one. A friend was walking in the South End on the Thursday night after the election. A car drove past him and the four young men inside screamed, "Faggot!" "This is certainly not the first time," he wrote on his KFacebook page. "Nor, I'm sure, will it be the last. But it was the first time I was honestly scared."

Here's two. Xavier, a first-grader, whose father is black, was talking with a classmate. The classmate said he was voting for Trump. Xavier asked, "Why?" "Because he will send all the black people away because they are killing the white people."

Here's three. A 40-year-old woman, who has been riding the New York subway for years, was called a "white bitch" for the first time last Monday.

Trump's words have done this. They've fanned the flames. But they have also illuminated the problem. Now the underbelly is visible. Now there is no denying the hate.

Donald Trump may well be the worst thing that's ever happened to our country, or he may be the best.

This is up to us. We can add to all the hate by hating back. We can sit around and just complain. Or we can work together not just to change people's minds but to change people's hearts.

It's in this way, and it is the only way, that we will make America great again.