The NY Times' Elizabeth Dias, who has a master's degree in divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary, went in search for an answer to "Biden and Trump Say They’re Fighting for America’s 'Soul.' What Does That Mean?" What she found was as clarifying as Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart's opinion on pornographic obscenity in Jacobellis v. Ohio: "I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description, and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it."
The "soul of America"? It's as precisely knowable as the separation between socially redeeming (whatever that means) and unredeeming porn. D.H. Lawrence's most famous novel was banned for using that word, which I gather was unredeeming for us. But widely reading Lawrence reveals that he believed he understood this nation's soul.
But then we encounter the likes of Marlo Tucker, the director of California's chapter of Concerned Women for America, a coven of right-wing Christian loonies, who said to Ms. Dias: "I know this is a Christian nation, the founding fathers were influenced by the biblical values. People are confused and … angry, they are frustrated. They are searching for hope again in government, they are searching for leaders who actually care for their problems."
The founders, among whom was a large bloc of deists, were for sure influenced to some extent by biblical values, but much more by history's suffering tolerance of tyrannical rulers, such as Donald Trump. And yet Ms. Tucker cannot see what is right in front of her face, because of a diseased, religious ideology that is void of any historical or even contemporary understanding. The vomiting of which she calls America's soul.
Franklin Graham, another malodorous, devout Trumpeteer — who is worth an estimated $10 million, I guess through prayer — recently wrote that America's "moral and spiritual framework, which has held our nation together for 243 years, is now unraveling." If our moral and spiritual framework evolved from centuries of enslavement and racial discrimination, it damn well should unravel. Perhaps then we can begin rebuilding what's left of American honor.
No, I cannot define America's soul any more that Elizabeth Dias' search for consensus did. But historian Jon Meacham has what is probably as far as we can go, at least in this era of Donald Trump's soul-crushing government stewardship: “My sense is, it is much less about an Elizabeth Warren 10-point plan, or a Bernie Sanders revolution than it is a restoration of a politics that is more familiar and not so agitating. [Voters] just want somebody to run the damn thing with a modicum of efficiency and sanity."
Amen.