This is the season for ceasefires and love

The era of good feeling between Thanksgiving and Christmas is an excellent time to take a serious look at a country muddled in violence, bigotry, intolerance, polarization and hatred. And, on top of that, polls show that Americans are getting more miserable, too.

Polls also show that the polarized Republicans and Democrats hate each other more than ever before and the election season is just ahead when we will experience unprecedented recrimination, anger and hate.

Polarization is trickling down into the citizenry more and more. And as long as we join in demonstrating intolerance, anger and hate, there is no hope of moderation in the years ahead.

Sure there are a lot of good people, churches, charitable and community organizations doing their best to reach out to the victims and needy but their efforts are falling far short.

Many of us look to churches to champion love in these turbulent times but churches are having a difficult time fighting off secularization of their faith and moral values. In the period of 1999-2001 and 2017-18 masses of church member quit the faith and cut their financial support. It seems that as churches are declining they are taking morals down with them.

There is little love in the public domain because there is little love in the private domain. The public domain is what it is because we are who we are – and most of us are not wise enough to shed our grudges and hatreds. We want to hate President Trump; we love to despise Speaker Pelosi. Decency and love are on the run and we are a part of it.

In this Thanksgiving-Christmas season when people become more cordial and caring the country needs to launch an armistice on hate, a ceasefire on intolerance and a suspension of violence and make Thanksgiving-Christmas a season of love and charity. If we try it for a season, maybe some of it will endure for a year.

In “Moral Man and Immoral Society,” Reinhold Niebuhr predicts hard rowing for love beyond the front door— and he has no confidence in social engineering, religion, education or wealth for reaching out to those in need. He says that we are lucky to get action at the local level, let alone think about the starving and needy beyond the city limits.

Niebuhr needs to be proved wrong— for at least one month. It should be possible. Here we are the richest, richest, richest country in the world while thousands of human beings in North Dakota, the nation and the world, are being tossed about without compassion or care. We have the resources to do better.

We now have an increasing number of Moslems in North Dakota, many of them appearing in public jobs exposed to continual outbursts of intolerance. In that hijab is a human being who has feelings just as we do and goes home frequently in tears after a day of slurs in a strange land.

We may have become hardened to the historical abuse of African-Americans but the blacks among us are not in history. They are here and, like us, hurt when the bigots speak out.

Hundreds of children in North Dakota get nothing but a Tiny Tim meal at Christmas and few gifts under the tree. The same is true about elderly folks who are fearful in their fragile end days.

So we have plenty of prospects for tolerance, generosity and love. Hugs, treats, gifts, meals, a kind word and acts of love will do us better than hate, anger and intolerance.