Axar.az presents an article “Broken” by John Samuel Tieman.

28 October 2024

I wonder if we will ever recover from Donald Trump's insurrection. I wonder if we will ever heal from our nation's brokenness.

I recently read that Margaret Mead, the cultural anthropologist, was asked by a student what she considered to be the first sign of civilization. A femur, she answered. No one expected that answer. Folks expected to hear about a cave painting perhaps, maybe a clay pot. No, she thought of a thigh bone that had been broken and then healed.

In the wild, Dr. Mead explained, if you break your leg then you die. You can't run from predators. You can't hunt. You can't gather food. No animal in the wild survives a broken leg long enough for the bone to heal. A broken femur that has healed is evidence that someone has protected and nurtured the wounded person. Someone has bound that wound. Someone has seen that person through recovery. That's where civilization starts, Mead said. "We are at our best when we serve others.”

This is what I was thinking about when by chance I came across this diary-like reflection from 2021. As we near this election day in 2024, it's worth sending this along. Have we recovered from Trump's insurrection? Have we served each other, taken our nation from brokenness to recovery? I don't know. As I reread my thoughts from 2021, I don't feel today like we've healed.

7 January 2021

Yesterday I watched in D. C. something that, decades ago, I would have told you simply doesn't happen here. An insurrection. An attempted coup.

Four years ago, as Trump neared 270 electoral votes, the number needed to win, as he hovered at 266, I wept. I thought, “This man is going to hold the same office that was held by Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt.”

You cannot think of the Enlightenment, you can't say the names Diderot, Rousseau, Condorcet, and not include the name Jefferson. Thomas Jefferson, the man who wrote words that changed humanity. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

You cannot think of the great liberators of the 19th century, Wilberforce, Louverture, Bolivar, and not include the name Lincoln. Abraham Lincoln, the man who penned the words, “that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Woodrow Wilson, the man who penned the “14 Points”. With “Point 14”, which called for “a general association of nations”, he became the progenitor of the League Of Nations and the United Nations.

And Franklin Roosevelt. A man who sat comfortably alongside Churchill and Stalin. The man who assured us that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

And now Donald Trump was going to occupy the same office as these men. Trump, a man whose most famous words are “grab 'em by the p---y.” I didn't know then if the republic would survive. And I still don't know.

Tonight, I stayed up late to watch the final tally of the Electoral College votes. Maybe it's the Catholic kid in me, but I always love these ceremonies. Tonight, however, I wondered which ritual I was watching, the Baptism of a new president, or the Requiem for the Republic.

Decades ago, in 1974, a man brought his boy to the White House. But he didn't want his boy to see what was there. He wanted the child to see what wasn't there. This was just hours after former President Richard Nixon was forced from office. He wanted his son to see that the most powerful man in the land was forced to leave perhaps the most powerful office in the world, and there wasn't a single tank on the streets.