This morning I got an email from a friend who, after mentioning several disturbing items from today’s news, wondered: “Are we becoming truly unhinged as a society and/or is this pain a “healing crisis “ that physicians and therapists consider an often critical part of healing on all levels.—mind, heart body and spirit.”
Here’s how I responded:
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Your question about where this is heading -- becoming "unhinged" or "healing crisis" -- is a vital one, but it's not one that has an answer that's inherent to this moment but rather is one that will be determined as the nation unfolds its destiny into the future.
The piece of the picture on which I'm focused concerns the nature of the leadership that America will be having in the next several years. (Of course, that in itself will be the product of a whole lot of forces -- both destructive and constructive -- operating in the nation and in the political consciousness of the American people.)
- If Trump somehow recovers from his current collapse and/or manages to steal the election, the brokenness of America can only increase thereafter (for however long).
- If Biden is elected, but proves himself incapable of coping with those forces that must be overcome to turn the nation toward healing (and away from unhingedness), I expect we will muddle through in a way I would find unsatisfactory.
- But I've found myself having increasing hope that Biden -- who seems to be capable of recognizing and appreciating and following capable advisors -- will rise to the occasion.
Rising to the occasion would mean taking advantage of the opportunities presented by so much being broken in the America he would inherit. Such brokenness creates opportunities because brokenness calls for rebuilding, and that creates the space for a "transformative" presidency.
(And reportedly, Biden is increasingly starting to see fundamental transformation as what the times will need -- and what he will endeavor to achieve -- when he would take office next year.)
What I’m hoping for is something like what began in 1933, when FDR became President.
At that time, too, as the nation languished in the depths of the Great Depression, with unemployment around 25% and with banks collapsing as panicking people all sought to withdraw their money at once, the question of whether things would fall still further apart or be healed was likewise alive, and likewise filled with uncertainty.
Fascist governments were rising elsewhere in the world, and fascist possibilities were arising in the United States.
In that context, Franklin Delano Roosevelt assumed the Presidency— Roosevelt, who'd previously been a somewhat conventional politician, but also a person one whose character had been deepened by his own personal resurrection from the devastating attack of polio that had sidelined him for most of the 1920s. (Have Biden's repeated experiences with deep grief likewise deepened him?)
I do not believe that it was obvious in 1933 that FDR was the kind of leader who could provide transformational leadership to a nation facing fear, despair, and suffering. But that's what happened. And when the United States emerged from the age of FDR, it was a much better nation in almost every respect than it had been when he was first inaugurated, and declared to the nation, "the only thing we have to fear is.. fear itself."
It is not yet obvious what Joe Biden is capable of doing in the situation in which he would find himself if he becomes President next January.
One difference between Biden's potential situation and that which FDR faced upon assuming the Presidency is that FDR's party had complete control of Congress, whereas even with the most optimistic scenarios -- Democrats becoming a majority in the Senate -- the Republicans will still have sufficient power in the Senate to do to obstruct Biden's legislative agenda.
The one question that I would like to see Biden asked -- maybe now, but maybe at some future appropriate moment -- is this: "If the Republicans attempt to cripple your presidency the way they worked to cripple Obama's -- with across-the-board obstructionism, making your failure their top priority -- how would you deal with them?"