Bill Holmes

Opinion contributor

I wrote my first letter to the editor when I was in high school. It was inspired by a classmate and future sportswriter, Jim Bolus, who wrote an essay on man’s inhumanity to man. Even in our teens we were at least somewhat aware of the injustices going on around us.

We were living in the midst of racial injustice. There were times when our black classmates, including future NAACP leader, Raoul Cunningham, were a few blocks away being detained by the police.

They were guilty of being black while seated in a restaurant. I was either uncertain about what to do or I lacked the courage to do it; therefore, I wrote. As I recall, I made the claim that this country would not fall to an outside power, such as communism, but it would rot from within. Today the stench of moral decay, especially in politics, is creeping across America.

As I recently watched the men and women standing behind President Donald Trump and chanting “Send them back!” I tried to imagine who they are, where they come from, and how they got to this point in their lives.

Most likely they would get up the next morning and, like most of us, go to work and school hoping to make a better life. Since they were in the South, the so-called Bible belt, they would more than likely claim the label “Christian.” No matter where they came from or what they now do in life, all had this in common: They were cheering for Trump and chanting slogans aimed at racial minorities, especially those who have had the audacity to speak out against social inequities and injustice.

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It is as though some had been led to believe that Trump is their savior and is ready to reward them with a better place in life. Even if such does not occur, they are seemingly content with simply identifying with power which, at the moment, is centered in Trump’s hands. Some have apparently made peace with injustice even as they benefit in some way from its fruits.

As a nation we seem to have grown comfortable with injustice. Have we seen so many kids in cages and parents crowded inhumanely into chain-link prisons that our hearts and minds have become immune? Out of despair have we thrown up a white flag of surrender?

I thought we had made some real strides in civil rights and defeating racial inequality since my days at Louisville Male High in 1958-1961. At times I suspect it was all an illusion created out of my ignorance and my whiteness.

Over the years I have been both the recipient and the bearer of the words, “You have cancer.” Such a pronouncement has strong potential to throw us into a time of disorientation. At such times our profound certainties can be deeply challenged. The threat of non-existence looms over us. One thing is certain: life will never be the same; we never truly go back to where we were.

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Unless we have been totally tuned out or in denial, we surely know by now that we have a national malignancy, a cancer from within that threatens the foundations of our democracy. The Constitution is being slapped around by the powers-that-be and, so far, neither political party has raised strong objections. It seems they are more interested in being reelected or running for president. Democrats beat each other up for political advantage while Republican leaders fail to lead, placing their party’s power and their personal gains above all else.

How long will we go about our daily lives acting as though nothing is wrong? How much energy will we expend blocking out the images of suffering and injustice being sponsored by our tax dollars.

We cannot afford to be complacent. If we wait until tomorrow and look at today only though the rearview mirror, we risk never being the nation we intended to be. I say “intended” for we have fallen short again and again. It is imperative that we come to a new orientation and that right soon.

We have some very difficult days of uncertainty ahead. We must stay engaged and not succumb to despair. We cannot hang our harps on a tree by a river in Babylon and there weep over what is no more or, in fact, never was. We can neither deny the reality of our time nor linger in an abyss of despair.

It would be well for us to seek out MLK’s mountaintop and see if we can catch a renewed vision for America. Above all, we must take hold of King’s challenge to America: “… be true to what you said on paper.”

The Rev. Dr. Bill Holmes of Louisville is a retired child neurologist and hospital chaplain.