America Will Survive This. Whatever This Is

At last night's meeting of National Capital Presbytery a bunch of friends and colleagues who I hadn't seen since last spring stopped to offer their condolences on the death of my mom over the summer. Their kindnesses got me to thinking about the weeks around mom's death, and it brought back to mind a story I meant to share. So here it is:

Back in mid-July I took a cab to National Airport to catch a flight to Chattanooga to be with my mother as she neared the end of her life. Mom, who breathed her last about ten days after my cab ride, was a life-long New Deal Democrat who believed passionately in the American project. One of her few regrets, I'm certain, was not living long enough to see the end of the current administration. In fact, we spoke specifically of that desire about a year before her death, when it seemed reasonably likely that she’d be around long enough to cast another vote for a Democrat for president. Alas, that was not to be.

Actually, by the time I made it to her bedside in mid-July she was fading in and out of consciousness so no real conversation was possible. That’s a shame because mom would have loved to hear about the cabbie who drove me to the airport.

He was a delightful middle-aged Ethiopian man who has lived in the States for about 20 years. Has cab radio was tuned to NPR’s coverage of special prosecutor Robert Mueller’s testimony to congress, so I asked him what he thought.

He smiled and said, “America will survive Mr. Trump.” I said that I hoped so but sometimes feared that the damage being done to our institutions through these years would be lasting and profound.

Then he told me a story about why he believed in the future of the great American experiment in self-governance, liberty, and the rule of law.

He said that during the first few weeks of the Trump Administration, when the first ban on immigration from specific majority-Muslim countries was imposed, he was taking a fare to Dulles. The passenger was a Moroccan man on the first leg of his journey home. On the way to the airport, the Moroccan man expressed his personal fear in light of the ban and his broader fearfulness about the future of democracy here.

The cabbie, whose home country is about 40-percent Muslim, told me, “I said to him, let me tell you something that is happening at Dulles right now.” He then reminded me of the dozens of attorneys who showed up at the airport in January, 2017, to offer legal assistance to those trying to enter the U.S. from Muslim countries. While some of the lawyers were part of immigration rights groups, many just showed up when they read news reports and felt moved to help in any way they could.

The cabbie said, “that is the real America, and it will live a lot longer than Donald Trump.”

My mom would have unabashedly agreed with him. Then again, she thought she’d survive the Trump years, too. I hope the cabbie was right. I hope our institutions are stronger than the impulses of those whose self-serving, self-dealing, self-centeredness threatens their future. And ours.