There’s hatred, evil and injustice, but this is the ‘real’ America, too

By David McElroy · June 8, 2018

When a University of Texas student crushed his wrist and needed a trip to an emergency room, he called Uber in Austin for a ride. But when Beni showed up to drive the injured man to a hospital, he did more than provide transportation.

“This is my Uber driver Beni,” the grad student wrote when he posted this photo on Reddit Friday evening. “He took me to the hospital and [is] keeping me company since most of my family lives out of the state.”

It’s just a small act of decency, but the story made me happy. I found myself thinking that this is the real America I know. It’s a place where most people will help each other when there’s need. It’s a place where most people are still more decent, more humane and more loving than we sometimes remember.

About a month ago, an artist who goes by Childish Gambino released a video for a song he called “This is America.” It’s a cynical and one-sided portrayal of racism and injustice. The evil the song portrays does exist. I agree with the need for change to eliminate politically driven injustice, but I was bothered by the title. Is this depressing and cynical picture of America fair and accurate?

Every story has two sides. Even if there’s an ugly side, there’s usually a beautiful side as well. If you focus all on the good, you’ll see a saccharine facade that hides the truth. But if you focus all on the bad, you’ll see a dystopian cess pool that also hides the truth.

The America of injustice and racism in the song depicts some truth, but it also conceals a lot of truth.

When the song first came out and I pondered the title — “This Is America” — I was bothered by the fact that it’s dishonest because it conceals the truth I see every day. It angrily denounces injustice, but it seems to say this is what America really is.

And the notion that America is all about injustice, racism and evil is a lie.

I experience a very different reality of what America is. I experience an America where most people get along remarkably well and treat each other decently. There is certainly ugliness and hatred and squalor, but there is also beauty and love and hope.

This picture of the young black man showing kindness and decency for a young white stranger is typical of the America I know.

I’m not minimizing the things that are wrong. Although we might disagree on what they are, most of us have a vague sense of unease about the direction things have taken in some regards. I’ve talked a lot about those in the past — about injustice and political corruption and cultural evils. I don’t feel the need to keep writing about those, but let’s acknowledge they’re real — and let’s also acknowledge that if you’re black or brown or poor, you’re far more likely to experience such injustice.

But America isn’t just evil politicians sending young black men to rot in prison for victimless crimes. America isn’t just powerful people who take advantage of the poor and weak. America is much more than that.

America is the millions of people who volunteer to feed and shelter the homeless and help those who are otherwise in need. Unless you’ve been part of those church groups or other non-profits who quietly and selflessly serve, you might not know they exist.

America is a country where people with money voluntarily give more of their resources to help others than has ever been given in history.

America is a country where more and more people of different races — and mixed races — mostly work together in peace and friendship and harmony.

America is a place where neighbors still help neighbors in need. It’s a place where a fast food restaurant I’m familiar with quietly donates money and clothing to a poor employee who’s gone through an apartment fire and lost everything.

I see the evil and injustice in America, but I see the amazing goodness in our people, too. I see a lot that still needs to change — and I don’t expect us to ever live in utopia — but I see a place where there is more right than ever in many ways.

There’s something that Beni the Uber driver can teach all of us. Yes, part of the lesson is that we need to be ready to help others when they need our help — in big ways or little ways — but there’s something else.

It’s right there on his shirt: “Stay Humble.”

Not a single one of us has all the answers. There’s plenty wrong everywhere. But if we will stay humble with one another — and learn to love, starting with individuals and then learning to outgrow our tribalism — we can keep moving forward and become better human beings.

America has a lot wrong with it, but it’s only fair and honest to remember there’s a lot right with us, too.

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If you have problems with high blood pressure, I’d like to encourage you to consider making serious changes to your diet. There might be some people who don’t have any choice but to start taking prescription medications for high blood pressure, but I’d like to tell you that I have completely eliminated my issue by eliminating all sugar and almost all carbohydrates. (A couple of months ago, my blood pressure hit 185/144, which was dangerously high — considered stage 3 hypertension.) By completely changing my eating habits, I’m down 22 pounds and my blood pressure is now in the “ideal” range — without taking any medication. In addition, I sleep better and I have more energy. Getting away from the sugar-laden mess that we generally refer to as “highly processed food” has been a life-changer for me. Now my challenge is to avoid slipping back into old habits — by eating in the dangerous ways that almost everyone in our society has come to see as normal.

When I first heard about this, I thought it must be satire. When I discovered it was real, I was appalled, but I still thought it must be a one-time thing from some nutty activist. But it turns out it’s the latest bit of pandering to a bunch of far-left activists who believe that a man can become a woman if he decides to claim he’s a woman. As everybody knows, men have prostate glands. Women do not. Period. End of story. Men can get prostate cancer. Women cannot. But political activists are so eager to pretend that a man claiming to be a “trans woman” is really a woman that they are insisting that “women” be included in public health messages about the issue. This is nothing but political virtue-signaling. If you’re a man, you know which parts you have. You know that you ought to be screened. Nobody is made any safer by dragging far-left gender ideology into simple medical reality.

Every time someone tries to tighten requirements around the use of absentee ballots, I hear screams from Democrats and others on the political left that such efforts are nothing but “suppression of black voters.” These protests have never made sense to me, especially because it’s never been a secret that absentee ballot fraud goes on all the time in certain areas. (Everybody knew it when I worked in politics.) The people who engage in such fraud are rarely caught — often because the local political establishment approves of the crime — but a Democrat who won a primary election in Clay County, Alabama, last year has pleaded guilty to this sort of cheating. Terry Andrew Heflin was running for a place on the Clay County Commission. He was caught ordering seven absentee ballots in the names of various voters and sending them to his post office box — after which he used the ballots to vote absentee for himself seven time. Did he have other people cast additional fraudulent ballots? We’ll never know. But in a primary in which he was able to win with only 141 votes, it wouldn’t take many fraudulent votes to change the election. The next time you hear “civil rights activists” claim that it’s just “voter suppression” to hurt blacks which is at the root of efforts to stop this fraud, remember Terry Heflin. If you care about fair and honest elections, ballot security and voter identity should matter to you.

A state legislator in Maine has been stripped of the ability to speak in the state Legislature — and her votes are not being counted on legislative issues — all because she made a truthful social media post. Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn, Maine) opposes allowing boys to compete against girls’ teams in school athletics and she’s become known for making an issue of it. On Feb. 17, she posted on Facebook about a recent example that she found outrageous. She posted side-by-side photos of a boy named John who competed last year in a state track event and won fifth place against other boys two years ago — and a photo of the same boy (now called Katie) who won first place in the same event this year against girls. Whether you find this outrageous or not, Libby is clearly being honest and truthful about the objective facts of an issue of public importance. But the state Legislature censured her. Democrats decreed that she could not speak in the House and that her votes would not count on legislation — until she apologized for the outrage of telling the truth. She refused and her constituents have been unrepresented in the state House since then. The people who promote this ideology are out of touch with reality and won’t rest until they force the rest of us to join them in this delusion. But even if you agree with “trans” ideology, you should be appalled at this heavy-handed attack on political speech.

The late Steve Jobs was at the center of our culture’s transition from analog to digital. He co-founded Apple Computer. He led the team that revolutionized personal computing with the first Macintosh. As CEO of Apple, he led the development of the iPhone and later the iPad. You would think the children of such a man would be surrounded by technology. But Jobs and his wife Laureen didn’t let their children use iPads. Their home had few screens of any kind. Even though Jobs spent most of his time developing and selling Macs and iPhones and iPads, he was home with his wife and children for dinner when he was in town. The family ate together at a simple wooden table in their kitchen — and there were no digital devices or focus on popular culture. Instead, he’s said to have guided his family toward deep discussions of art, philosophy and education — with no iPads to be found. If the man who guided the development of such products chose a different path for his own children, does that suggest that his digital experience taught him that children need human connection, not screens? And does it suggest the possibility that we might be better off if we made the same choice for our families?

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