America the Beautiful in Dark Times

By Gordon Shepherd

America the Beautiful in Dark Times begins and ends with reflections on the fundamental ideals of American democracy expressed by the nation's sixteenth president in a dark time of civil war. In between these affirmations, Gordon Shepherd depicts the dangerous threats of present-day Trumpism to democratic norms and the capitulation of the Republican Party in the service of Trump's authoritarian vendetta to regain the White House after falsely refusing to concede his defeat in the 2020 election. At the same time, Shepherd writes of our capacity for sustaining hope and resolve in dark times through conversation, poetry, and literature—through storytelling that reminds us of honor and respect in a civil society, and through the concerned voices of parents and teachers who uphold in their homes and classrooms democratic principles for America's children to learn and cherish.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Mar 29, 2024
• ISBN: 9798350952025

Gordon Shepherd

Gordon Shepherd is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Central Arkansas. Born and raised in Salt Lake City, Utah, Shepherd earned his bachelor's degree from the University of Utah and his PhD from the State University of New York at Stonybrook where he studied social theory under Lewis Coser. In collaboration with his brother, Gary, he has authored numerous academic articles and several books on religion and social change. Along with his brother, his literary repertoire includes a boyhood memoir, Growing Up in the City of the Saints and Stories of Forgotten Sports Idols and Other Ordinary Mortals. Most recently, Shepherd is the author of Lost Conversations with Abraham Lincoln.

Book preview

America the Beautiful

I wrote many of the following pieces during the regrettable presidency of Donald J. Trump. At the present time, early 2024, Trump is out of office, having been defeated for reelection by Joe Biden in 2020, which prevented the foreseeable nightmare of a second Trumpian term as the executive officer and commander in chief of the United States of America. That said, the country’s future is still very much in the balance, as candidate Trump continues to exercise an outsized, malignant influence on the Republican Party and a very sizeable fraction of the nation’s electorate for a second term in office. As we anxiously await the nation’s November 2024 elections, what I wrote during Trump’s first ignoble presidency concerning our country’s future seems even more fraught with peril today than when I wrote them several years ago. History is always complicated by contending political factions that espouse conflicting visions of power and their intended beneficiaries. The catchline, America the Beautiful, represents a mythical, compassionate ideal toward which our country in its better moments has aspired historically, but one which has become increasingly tarnished in the dark times of the present century. Does it matter? Are mythical ideals nothing more than fantasies that serve to make us feel better about ourselves? Perhaps so, but the idealist in me believes they can also be a meaningful source of inspiration and resolve to try harder and do better.

With Malice Toward None  in Lincoln’s America

Sic semper tyrannis! shouted the hate-filled assassin as he hobbled off Ford’s stage.

Father Abraham’s lank form stretched diagonal and cold on a narrow boarder’s bed across the street from the presidential balcony. Now he belongs to the ages, sobbed his querulous and once-disdainful secretary of war. O Captain! My Captain! mourned the poet laureate. A Kentuckian Hoosier, Illini rustic deified in marble as the Union’s savior.

America the Beautiful.

Today his solemn profile adorns the face of every copper penny we carelessly cast aside. Lincoln and America the Beautiful, our national icons mortally tarnished before our eyes in the ugly age of Trump the defiler.

No rustic he, but a poisonous Gotham real estate toad and swindler. What must we say then of the millions who swoon for him and forsake their country’s mythical promises of democracy and equality to prove their god is a god of hate and vengeance?

America the Beautiful.

When the bloated defiler finally croaks his last, will he too be memorialized by a grateful nation? Grateful for what?

For reteaching us that might makes right?

For reaffirming that America is the divine citadel for Christian white people?

For convincing us that science is a malignant falsehood foisted on us by mysterious conspirators?

For demonstrating once and for all that unrestrained greed is good and damn the future?

America the Beautiful.

I wretch at the thought of where the defiler wants to drag us, is dragging us. I despair of the political hyenas in today’s party of Lincoln who cheer him on with their sulfurous voices of fear and hate that defile the temple of Father Abraham.

Our history is stained with self-righteous avarice and violence, but are we no better than this? Can we no longer be inspired to renewal by Abraham’s stubborn humility?

With malice toward none, with charity for all, in Lincoln’s America. That at least, in the final agonies of bloody civil war, was his optimistic vision.

What, pray god,