“These are the times that try men’s souls,” wrote Thomas Paine in his 1776 pamphlet, The American Crisis. Now I don’t think that there’s a better way to couple that quote with one better than former New York Yankee’s Yogi Berra’s famous, “Deja vu all over again,” especially if you’re an armchair philosopher with an opinion about the messiness of current times, a connoisseur of famous quotes, a history buff, or all three. But hold that for now, okay?
You see, I count my blessings with the knowledge that I have access to two history buffs, avid readers and deep thinkers on matters of politics and social issues facing our world and nation these days. I count on them when I need them the most, particularly when I need a “you got to be kidding” sanity check on my what “lying eyes” are seeing or what I’m hearing from my “lying ears.”
Now the two individuals I’m talking about here are Andrew (“Butch”) and Bernard (“Bro Bernard”). Oh, yes, I should also mention that they are both proudly liberal and graduates of Knoxville College, a phenomenal HBCU (Historically Black College and University) institution. High school seniors, guidance counselors and workforce recruiters… are you listening?
“Hey Butch,” I started my conversation with, “can you help me make sense as to why the assassination of Charlie Kirk, a young, white ultra-conservative MAGA advocate, whose life was snuffed out by another young, white MAGA advocate, whose name I’d rather not dignify in this space, led as some believe to bomb threats at several HBCU institutions? I’m lost.”
“It’s called gaslighting, distracting and scapegoating, Terry,” he explained. “Our history is replete with shifting the blame to innocent Black folks when the crime committed doesn’t fit a preferred narrative. The knee jerk response by our president who, without a shard of evidence, immediately blamed left wing radicals for Kirk’s assassination fits the pattern. The sad thing is that he escaped accountability for telling such a lie.”
When we ended our phone call, Butch’s explanation conjured up memories of the 1989 case in Boston when Charles Stuart murdered his pregnant wife and blamed the killing on a Black man, and the 1994 case in South Carolina where Susan Smith drowned her two sons and blamed it on a Black man. In the aftermath of each false accusation, like herds of cattle being rounded up to be taken to an auction, large numbers of “suspicious looking” Black men were rounded up and questioned by authorities before the truth emerged.
I then posed the Kirk assassination question to Bernard who took my call in an airport in Indianapolis before boarding a flight back to Atlanta.
Said Bernard, “I believe we should look at where we are today as just another cycle that our country goes through. For our history the cycle started in the 1920s under President Woodrow Wilson with his public backing of the racist movie “Birth of a nation” which unlashed a reign of terror by the KKK. Today we’re witnessing a reign of terror aimed at immigrants who are rounded up by ICE, eliminating DEI, rewriting Black history and sending military forces into cities with African American mayors.” Bernard had one more thing to say before boarding his flight.
“If you study history, you’ll understand that America is always at war with itself and that cycles don’t tend to last too long. The hope here is that there’s not a lot of collateral damage in today’s cycle before it ends. Let’s resume this conversation next week.”
Now I want you to read and reflect on the following quote by a Pulitzer Prize winning author, then guess the year it was written:
“Already, the air in this nation is hot and mean, stifling with accusation and acrimony. Already, dialogue is being choked off like water gurgling to a halt in some rusty old faucet. Already, some of us are waiting, armed.”
Okay, when was it written? 1941? 1967? 1995? 2025?
Well, while it’s true that many would argue that the quote describes our society today, and certainly it does, the correct answer is year 1995. So, what were the circumstances 30 years ago that led to the description of the world by that author?
Well for starters, how about the assassination of Israeli Prime minister Yitzhak Rabin; the beginning of the dot.com era; the OJ. Simpson verdict; the Oklahoma City Bombing.
And if we fast forward to 2025, what are the headline-dominating circumstances that many argue would describe our predicament today? Well, how about Trump 2.0; tariffs galore; the Russia/Ukraine war; the Epstein files; Robert Kennedy, Jr.; ICE deportations; or more recently, the assassination of Charlie Kirk.
All this leaves us with this question; what have we learned and not learned during that 30-year period?
Okay, while you’re scratching your head in thought for answers, I’ll take the first plunge into the quagmire with some speculative answers of my own.
But first let’s get an undeniable truth out of the way. Most will agree that over the past 30 years as a nation we’ve sputtered along yet progressed in fostering a more representative and inclusive society. And that despite the inevitability of resistance and backlash that’s common in the evolution of cycles in history.
The election of Barack Obama as the nation’s first African American president comes to mind as a reminder of that progress. While some would argue that that was a seminal historical moment when African Americans had finally reached the pinnacle of achievement, others say that it unleashed a lot of pent-up ugliness and started a downturn in race relations in America.
And on the other side, still others would say wait, hold on, we’ve swung way too far, a sentiment that many say led to a swash-buckling Donald Trump descending the escalator in Trump Tower promising to ‘take our county back’ (to Lord knows where), thereby launching the MAGA movement.
Now history teaches us that each cycle ends with a reflection point, among them women’s suffrage in the early 20th century, the Civil Rights movement that started in 1954 and the Stonewall Rebellion for LGBTQ+ rights in 1969. After each reflection point came change, gradual change and backlash.
Mindboggling stuff, huh?
So, with today’s reflection point, we find ourselves in a convergence of widespread use of dehumanization, divisive rhetoric, finger-pointing, political violence, diminishing trust in institutions like the Supreme Court and the availability of firearms that, taken all together, has locked us behind mental and physical closed doors, ensconced in our echo chambers of anger, fear and distrust.
So where do we go from here is the question with no obvious answer before us.
Well, to frame an answer, I’ll repeat the 2025 version of the quote and follow it with a series of questions for a thoughtful analysis, questions that could be used in retreats, teams, civic and religious groups for personal and professional development and action plans:
“Already, the air in this nation is hot and mean, stifling with accusation and acrimony. Already, dialogue is being choked off like water gurgling to a halt in some rusty old faucet. Already, some of us are waiting, armed.”
The questions: What can we do more of, less of, stop doing altogether or start anew to influence how a version of that 2025 quote would be written 30 years from now and reflects where we would like to be as a nation and as individuals?
I’ll leave you with this to chew on…There can be no right answers without first asking the right questions!
Terry Howard is an award-winning writer, a contributing writer with the Chattanooga News Chronicle, The American Diversity Report, The Douglas County Sentinel, Blackmarket.com, recipient of the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Leadership Award, and third place winner of the Georgia Press Award.
