Those agricultural metaphors

We have spoken before about how agriculture not only provides the food we eat but also supplies some choice, apt metaphors, usable by people of every persuasion.

It was my seeing the headlines in the morning newspaper email which diverted me from the usual Sunday morning routine. Man charged with murder after driving his car into anti-right wing protesters. No, not in Europe, nor someone of Middle Eastern or North African origin: an incident in the USA, and a car driven by a full-blooded American.

Of course it is our view (admittedly an outsider's one) that the decision to remove a respected confederate general's statue was an unnecessary one. By all means stomp on individual aberrations of misplaced patriotism when these appear, but the wisdom of trying to excise a part of your own history ...? Americans should be able to speak of "our General Robert E. Lee" (and "our Frederick Douglass") in addition to "our Ulysses S. Grant".

The Virginia governor, we  hear, "told white supremacists to go home". The USA is home, or is Virginia not part of the USA?  There is a danger when we don't integrate what is part of us and make it an over there. It is the fault line of how a large portion of adherents interpret their religion ... and the religion of others. And so only members of another faith drive motor cars into people.

Trump has responded by telling Americans to “love each other, respect each other and cherish our history and our future together. So important. We have to respect each other. Ideally, we have to love each other.” The words are true, of course, but does this man have the right to say them?  A man who pushed every fault line to come up as president?

There are no short cuts to integrity. This is a bank account you must build (and lose) yourself: it cannot be inherited from another. The irony of the richest ever president and his cabinet of billionaires not possessing the moral capital to make a difference! In a world where fear creates every division, every us-them, leadership calls for individuals comfortable with the divides in their own selves to stand as figures of unity in their countries, especially when these countries have diverse populations. When a leader like that is not forthcoming, that country has a harvest to reap.