We need to get together right now

With age comes experience and, I hope, an element of wisdom.

I grew up in a time of great sociopolitical upheaval in our country. I was on the playground in fourth grade at Grant Wood when I heard of the assassination of John Kennedy. I was a ninth-grader at McKinley when Martin Luther King, Jr, the paragon of non-violent protest, was shot on a hotel balcony in Memphis. Only two months later I was listening live on the radio when Robert Kennedy was murdered. When I was a junior at Washington in the spring of 1970, National Guard members fired on unarmed students protesting the expansion of the Vietnam War at Kent State.

The Vietnam War galvanized resistance against the draft and the government. Selective Service offices were broken into and draft records destroyed. Eventually after atrocities like the My Lai massacre, the loss of 58,000 Americans, and widespread protests, we withdrew.

The Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964 guaranteeing freedom from discrimination based on race, religion, or sex. But racial violence persisted as civil rights workers disappeared and were murdered and more Black Americans joined to list of over 4,000 who were lynched.

Those were times of great division. However, I believe they pale in comparison to the political turmoil and hate in America now.

The recent shooting of a friend of the president brought more chaos. In times of national tragedy, presidents and other leaders appealed to their fellow Americans for unity and peace. Not so with the current administration. As is his custom, threats have been made and those of the opposing party have been accused without evidence.

We are a country of immigrants. However, after blocking bipartisan immigration legislation, the president has launched a xenophobic agenda against immigrants. Masked ICE agents stop and sometimes assault individuals because their skin is brown. Due process and warrants are minor inconveniences to be ignored. Undocumented noncitizens pay nearly 100 billion dollars of tax annually while contributing more than a quarter trillion dollars to our economy.

Law and order are said to be of paramount importance to our president. However, we all watched as insurgents breached the Capitol in an attempt to subvert the constitutional process of election certification. They injured dozens of police officers but were called “patriots.” Incredibly, individuals who assaulted the police were awarded presidential pardons.

Now we watch as the National Guard is deployed in Democratic cities for alleged crime emergencies. As this political saga unfolds, one can only think of the reaction of a force trained to fight wars and not to deal with civil issues at Kent State.

I come from a family of educators. Public education has been a source of pride and the foundation of excellence in America. The assault on public education in our state and others with consistent under funding and the diversion of hundreds of millions of dollars to private, predominantly religious schools will have predictable results.

And don’t get me started on vaccines. As a pediatrician with over four decades of experience, I remember all too well a time when many of the vaccines which protect our precious children were not yet developed. I lost a friend to meningitis when I was 16. I have been with multiple children and their families when they died from overwhelming bacterial infections that are now incredibly rare. I shared tears and hugs with their parents, and I think of them every day. I have seen children sustain devastating brain injuries or deafened or lose hands and feet.

And now we have a vaccine skeptic with no scientific background heading the HHS. He has surrounded himself with other discredited anti-vaxxers. Cases of measles have surged. Vaccination rates are falling, and our children are at risk as they have not been for decades. I find it telling that the mass use of pesticides and herbicides, some of which are outlawed in Europe, do not warrant MAHA attention. Could agribusiness lobbying dollars be a factor?

While we may disagree about the cause of climate change, any clear-thinking individual recognizes it is occurring. One has only to walk the receding paths of glaciers to understand the magnitude. In the last 17 years our city has experienced two unprecedented climate events — the 2008 flood and the 2020 derecho. Can’t our government support the development of renewable energy just as it spends tax dollars to support agriculture? Why are we curtailing water quality testing in this state and air quality testing nationally at a time when Iowa’s cancer rates are growing at rates faster than any state in the union and our water quality is abysmal?

Our country has been a generous in the past. We have provided aid in the form of technical expertise, food, vaccines, and medicines to developing nations countries earning us a reputation as humanitarians. But xenophobia has swept our government, and children are now dying of disease and starvation as that aid has been curtailed.

LGBTQ rights are being restricted. Diversity and inclusion are denied. History is whitewashed and rewritten. But slavery happened. Black people were burned at the stake in New York City. Native Americans were massacred, their bodies mutilated.

Voters are disenfranchised by redistricting. Retribution and revenge guide the current administration’s policy. Party members are silent as they are fearful of speaking out. Court orders are ignored and Congressional authority flouted. School shootings accelerate and with no end or solution in sight. If only there was as much publicity and internet angst for school shootings as when a restaurant chain modified its logo.

This is not the America that I knew. Political violence is never acceptable in our country, yet as many as a third of Americans of all political persuasions believe it is justifiable at times. Can we abide by the Constitution and its checks and balances? Shouldn’t we, as Americans, reach out and help those in developing countries? Can we provide a path to citizenship for those who traveled to America for a better life? Isn’t health care a right? Do Americans need to be hungry?

I am reminded of a favorite song the Youngbloods made popular in 1967: “Get Together.” Its lyrics seem especially relevant.

Come on people now, Smile on your brother, Everybody get together, Try to love one another right now … You can make the mountains ring, Or make the angels cry … Try to love one another right now.

I think the angels are crying.

Scott Nau is a semiretired pediatrician in Cedar Rapids.