My Sunday Feeling

I can't quite put my finger on it.  But things feel different.  Not particularly good.  Not really hopeful.  But different.

It is popular nowadays to refer to tipping points.  Ok. If the present moment is a tipping point what was its cause?  

The bungled response to the pandemic by this Administration?  The evisceration of the economy?  Unemployment numbers that rival those of the Great Depression?  The brutal torture and killing of yet another black man by the police?  A man who was completely subdued and in cuffs?  Who called for his mother as his life was being choked out of him? 

The ensuing, and occasionally violent protests across the nation?  Subjecting peaceful protestors to rubber bullets and tear gas in order to clear the space they occupied for a photo-op?  Was it the President-who is hardly known for his deep religious convictions-using a Holy Bible as a prop in front of a church whose door he hasn't darkened since his inauguration?

Was it the millions of people who still haven't gotten their unemployment or their Paycheck Protection loans?  Was it the threats of the use of active duty servicemen and women against Americans?  

Was it this week's jimmied up unemployment numbers?  The ones the President said George Floyd was smiling down on?  

Was it his inane promotion of quack cures and dangerous treatments?  Was it the criticism from all former presidents?  Was it the condemnation by his former head of the Joint Chiefs and Chief of Staff?  Was it the current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs stating that he was opposed to using the military for law enforcement purpose?

Was it property destruction and mass arrests in an otherwise peaceful-well, peaceful if you're white-town like Little Rock?  Was it seeing my wife in her clerical collar join a protest with other clergy downtown with her daughter?

Was it noticing that the coronavirus cases here are spiking again?  Was it the lack of a vaccine?  Was it wondering how we're going to do school much less sports?   

Was it the Trump Administration trying to end Obamacare during a pandemic?  With no alternative to replace it with?  Is it the low esteem with which we are held by our European allies?  Upon whose shores much blood and treasure was expended on yesterday's date in 1944?

Is it the fact that the President is fundamentally incapable of empathy?  Of kindness? Of appealing to what Abraham Lincoln famously referred to as the "gentler angels of our nature?"  Trump likes to say he learned how to be tough from his late lawyer Roy Cohn.  Big difference between Donald Trump and Roy Cohn.  Like Trump, Roy Cohn was live evil.  But Roy Cohn was smart.  Donald Trump has a big mouth.  He is not particularly smart.

Is it the fact that the man who is leading-check that-in charge was freaking impeached?

And all of these calamitous events-or three of them at least(the pandemic, the crash and the execution of George Floyd) -took place within 6 months.  

I believe that America is a good country populated primarily by good people.  I believe it or I would like to believe it.  I get the sense that people, even maybe people that were willing to give Trump the benefit of the doubt in the last election are weary of the incompetence, the meanness, and the constant drama.  

We are 5 months from November.  That is an eternity in politics.  But, for all of these reasons, I sense a tipping point.

And if it's not? God help us.