Why?

I wake up in the morning. Stirring under the covers, I turn my head and look out my bedroom window. There I see the cottonwood tree rustling in the morning breeze. It welcomes me to a new day—and my life.

But what is my life? Why am I here? And why am I conscious of that fact? These questions can seem unanswerable, even suggestive of underlying, unsolvable mysteries.

All religions help us with these questions. They show us how to deal with the mysteries of our lives; how to relate to what is intrinsically undefinable; and how to live in the womb of that mystery. We call the most basic mystery of all, God. Our relation to God we call worship, which is a sublime form of love. Embraced in the warmth of that relation, we feel grateful, reborn, and inspired to live worthy of experiencing that mystery. Our rebirth gives meaning to our individual lives and motivates us to share our experience of love with others. The wellspring of that rebirth is our relation to the unknowable source of our very being. And its motivating power is love.

It is only when we strip our lives down to this basic relation—to love—that we begin to realize what we share with all humans—what makes us fundamentally human. The essence of human adaptability amidst countless species’ extinctions and planetary cataclysms is the will not just to survive, but to preserve that basic relation both for our fellow human beings and for our posterity. We want to preserve what makes us human and, thereby, to preserve our families, our communities, our culture, and our civilizations.

The one obstacle to the preservation of our common humanity is the individual who fails to discover the motivating force of love. That force is only an inborn potential in individuals whose exposure to human love is limited or non-existent. But compassion, empathy, and expressions of human warmth can rekindle love’s power in others. Gratitude, for example, is not just a response to love, but can be a renewing power that also triggers love towards others. Think of the gratitude of an orphan adopted into a loving family, or of a wounded soldier rescued under fire by a comrade, or of tragedies’ victims nursed back to health and safety by caretakers. Though we nurture our humanity in home and communities, we can also regenerate it in life changing events.

Our nation faces many divisive forces, both within and without. For us to form a “more perfect union,” we must dedicate ourselves not only to the values expressed in our Constitution but to the motivating power of love. Today, we see an outpouring of that love in Las Vegas, as well as in Puerto Rico, Florida, and Texas. First responders, caregivers, charitable donors, and victims came together not only by sharing their anguish and pain but also their compassion and empathy. They shared the power of love.

In this moment, our nation can enliven our common humanity and the motivating force behind the human values formalized in our democracy. “Justice and liberty for all” is both our pledge of allegiance and an expression of our love for one another. It is a vow to preserve our community and our nation. We must resist those power seekers who value their personal status over the nation’s well-being. They lack empathy and seek justice and liberty for the few rather than “for all.” If we are going to preserve the many expressions of our founding principles in our institutions and norms of behavior, then we must rededicate ourselves to each other and the principled basis of our national union. We must love and respect each other.

Somewhere in Alexis de Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America,” I remember reading his prognosis that Americans were better than their leaders. Unfortunately, I can no longer find the context nor verify the accuracy of my memory. Nevertheless, I cannot attribute this prognosis to myself, but can only agree with it. If we are to preserve our union, we, as individual citizens, must constantly renew what binds us together. Our leaders may at times fall to those human vices born of ego, power and money. But, in our democracy, it is the citizen who holds the ultimate power. We renew that power every day when we express the mutual respect and love we share for each other and for our democratic institutions. Many have shown the way. But real change starts with each and every individual. America, then, depends on all of us.

Why not?

All religions tell stories that help us make sense of life and experience it more fully. Many of these stories seem to cross faith boundaries and reflect universal themes. Certain scholars study the thematic correlations in these stories and can identify the common myths found in nearly all religions. Psychologists of a certain persuasion have also noted how these shared themes correspond to the central architypes that inhabit our subconscious and often surface in our waking lives. Today I was thinking about the relevance of one of these religious stories to our modern era. Nearly everybody is aware of the Old Testament* Genesis story, even if they have never read it. In Chapter 1, verse 27, “And God made man, according to the image of God he made him. Male and female, he made them.” In Chapter 2, verse22, “And God formed the rib which he took from Adam into a woman and brought her to Adam.” What these passages tell us is that both men and women were created in the image of God and, as Adam quickly recognizes, Eve “now is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh (Ch.2, v.23).” But why, in the next verse do we find this conclusion, “Therefore shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cling to his wife, and they two shall be one flesh (Ch.2, v.24)?” The last part of this verse resonates with me because it helps me understand one of the central issues of our time.

Allow me to state the obvious: every human being is born of woman. Not only do we all have mothers, but they are by nature the foundation of the family. We men, of course, have an important role as fathers, but we do not carry little human beings in our bodies or nurse them at the breast. Moreover, through all human history, women have nurtured the family unit as the bedrock of society. And men, of course, have helped build and protect that foundation for both family and society. Obviously, both men and women are genetically and actively integral to human families. But the nurturing role of mothers initially defines and informs the role of parents. That nurturing requires compassion, self-sacrifice, and tireless safeguarding of familial relationships. It is difficult for anyone of us to develop the empathy required to build relationships outside of the family without the experience of a loving and supportive family structure and, more specifically, without a loving mother. Most parents intuitively recognize their mutual interdependence in raising their children. Their own relationship to each other is the model their children will have in uniting the male-female attributes of their own psyche and, as parents, in raising their own family. And families, as many have stated, are the foundation of communities and of the larger societal structures derived from them. It is easy to see this connection between family and society when travelling to other countries. Germans, for example, are raised in culturally different settings than the French—as would be the case across most national borders. Despite these cultural differences, there is something about family life that does not change. The major operating principle in every normal family is the influence of the male-female archetypes, their interrelationship, and union. Why is that union so important?

If you will bear with me, I am going to stretch the story of Paradise into a less common reading. Perhaps the “fall” occurred because Adam and Eve had not yet consummated their relationship. As innocents walking naked in the Garden of Eve, they were ill-equipped to deal with evil and therefore easily duped by the serpent into tasting the forbidden fruit. Afterwards, they became aware of their nakedness and of their potential to disobey God or commit an evil deed. Knowledge of their sexual differences is the precursor for God’s admonition that the “two shall be one flesh.” But beyond their physical union, men and women need each other. To put the matter more bluntly, it has always been our ability to screw things up that requires us to conjoin the male and female principles. We simply function better as a unit. That potential union is not only inferred in gender differences, but it is also latent in varying degrees within every individual psyche. Each of us are male-female, though one or the other architype is usually dominant. But Genesis reminds us why it is necessary that the “two shall be one flesh.”

My thesis here is not new. Somewhere in one of Joseph Campbell’s many books I remember reading how primitive communities were built around these male and female archetypes. The men were tribal warrior-protectors while the women were family nurturer-preservers. Both were needed to create and protect the community. Although we cannot know the daily interworking of these primitive societies, their rituals tell us something about the balance they strived to maintain between the male and female roles. When a young woman came of age for child bearing, the women convened to celebrate the occurrence. Since the men had no natural “coming of age” phenomenon, they invented initiation ceremonies to graduate boys into manhood and their hunter-warrior-protector role in the community. Like the girls’ transition into womanhood, the boys experienced no little anxiety and even some blood loss during these rites of passage rituals. But these ceremonies served to preserve the sexual balance of power in the tribe and in its communal relations. Even my cursory reading of the native American nations revealed the same dedication to this balance and to the communities served by it. When the Indian nations warred against each other, however, victory often accompanied the destruction of this balance. The vanquished men were humiliated (scalped) and killed, while their women were humiliated (raped) and most often stolen. These Indians apparently believed that they must destroy the power of men, but exploit and control for personal use the power of women. Much of our human history of war and conquest reflects the same belief. Even today we can witness how women may be exploited and, in effect, subjugated to male dominance.

We can identify vestiges of these primitive times in syndicated sex slavery rings or campus rapes or victims of domestic battery and in the heinous attacks and subjection of women by groups like Boko Haram, Al Shabab, and Daesh. In our most “enlightened” or liberated societies, women are often perceived in secondary or supportive roles, where their actual contributions are suppressed or not recognized. Certainly, it is true that women occupy a more prominent role in our American society than in the past. There are women CEOs and elected officials at every level of government. But America has not yet fully restored gender balance. More eloquent and informed voices than my own have spoken to this subject. Given the limitations of this blog, let me just summarize a few relevant examples: women still receive less money for the same job as their male counterparts; women are a majority of our population but represent much less than half of our elected representatives (e.g., 20 of our 100 U. S. Senators are women); women remain disproportionately absent in our written history; and they occupy a largely stereotyped presence in our media where we emphasize their sexuality and appearance over their other feminine attributes or competence. But whatever your feelings about the suppression of women, the real problem is with the suppression of the female archetype in men. Men who love women learn to identify with their own femininity in terms of their empathy for others and their role in building communal relations. Those men do not feel superior to women; nor do they want to suppress them.

The strongman or bully, by contrast, is really the incomplete man, insecure in his ability to relate by any means other than by authority or his power over others. We have seen this male ego throughout history and in our own time. They are either dictators and power mongers or wannabe strongmen. Too often they may also be our fathers, brothers, uncles, or friends. They may rail against other men who appear weak or gay for displaying emotion or empathy. They likely relate to women as sex objects and treat their wives as accouterments to their success or power. Since we no longer have a “rite of passage” for men, perhaps the only way to restore the male-female balance is through reflection and an honest reevaluation of our social relations. The word “restoration” carries a special significance here.

Over a thousand years ago, humankind experienced a restoration. When the Moors were driven out of Europe, they left behind a trove of art, literature, science and mathematics that they had assimilated from Greek civilization. The restoration of this legacy to Europe spurred the West’s emergence from the millennium of the so-called Dark Ages. It gave birth to the Renaissance and, subsequently, the Age of Enlightenment. I believe we are in the process of another restoration, one that may be five millennia in the making. The restoration now upon us is that of the female archetype, the myth of the Goddess, our earth mother. For nearly four millennia before recorded history, it was the Goddess that inspired men and women to nurture their families, to honor the fertility of the earth, and to respect women and nature as the native source of energy and all life. The advent of the male dominated nomadic tribes into Europe, beginning in 3500 B.C., gradually eradicated the Goddess culture with the brutal suppression and genocide of its tribal adherents. Since that culture left no written history, scholars have endeavored to reconstruct it from the artifacts and sculpted sacred objects left behind. ** We now have a clearer understanding of our unwritten pre-history and of that part of our nature we have too often ignored. It is likely that the story of the fall in Genesis is a written reminder of an oral tradition from that earlier period of the Goddess. Embedded in that myth is a lesson about human nature. That “they two shall be one flesh” is a simple statement of fact: we are, each one of us, meant to be male-female. We cannot survive without this union. We need both the warrior and the mother to protect and nurture our kind. We simply cannot create a peaceful and compassionate world order without first restoring this male-female union in each of us.

In retrospect, I want to say something about the so-called “battle of the sexes.” Not so many years ago, the media billed a tennis match between an aging male tennis player and a female tennis star—that is, Bobby Riggs and Billy Jean King—as the epitome of this battle. Women, it was believed at the time, were challenging male supremacy. And, from an extreme male perspective, they needed to be shown their place. More recently, we witnessed an election between a grandmother who had a well-documented career in public service and a man who boasted of his business acumen, wealth, and personal superiority. Much was made of each other’s competency and trustworthiness. Donald Trump claimed Hillary Clinton was “crooked” and weak, using her feminine wiles to hide personal misconduct and physical frailty. In response, Hillary Clinton characterized Donald Trump as emotionally unstable, a bully, and a misogynist. Of course, their contest had many points of contention. But underlying their campaigns was the undeniable issue of a woman’s fitness to hold the highest office in the land. Could she hold her own on the political stage and in the world diplomatic arena? Although she won the popular vote, she lost most of the States. Their campaigns, among its many points of contention, was an anachronistic reprisal of the “battle of the sexes.”

Since the election, President Trump has been very busy with his efforts to “dismantle the administrative state” and to fire opponents whom he designates as parties of a conspiratorial “deep state.” In the context of this blog, how should we weigh the male-female balance in the successes he claims for his initiatives? Does removal of America from the Paris climate accord display respect for mother earth? Does eliminating pollution provisions from his predecessor’s clean power initiative show any regard for the clean air and water needs of his constituents? Does the elimination of healthcare coverage for (in favor of payable access to) newborn or well-baby care, maternity, birth control, home medical care, drug or opioid addiction, nursery home care, and mental health services show empathy for women, children or the aged? Do not these healthcare changes reestablish the practice of gender bias in premium costs? Do his proposed budget cuts in food stamps, children’s lunches, public schools, medical research, the endowment for the arts, and science show any concern for those who benefit from these government programs? I think his brief time in office is a very bleak example of the male archetype in ascendancy. But his administration is regressive in the extreme and out of tune with the restoration of the female archetype currently underway.

We humans admire strength. We have fought—even killed—to gain power over others or control the world’s resources. But why, at this point in our history, should we not care for the preservation of all life on our planet, including our own posterity? Many of us think that amassing a fortune demonstrates strength of character. But why should we not be willing to share with the less fortunate? Some of us seek fame and status to gain influence and power over others. But why should we not maintain empathy for those who have neither? Being strong and being compassionate are not antithetical attributes, but complementary to our nature. If we support societal norms that denigrate or suppress women, we risk subordinating the female attributes in ourselves. We deny our true nature. And we misinterpret the lesson of Adam and Eve. They and we—male and female—are one flesh. Women need to assert their power. And men need to learn the language of the goddess. Failure to do so remains as one of the central issues of our time.

*These Old Testament quotes are taken from the original English translation of the Greek Septuagint bible by Sir Lancelot C. L. Brenton in 1851. Why did I use this source? It was the first English translation of the 72 Jewish scholars’ original work as commissioned by Alexander the Great. His intent was to preserve the Hebrew bible which was originally written in Aramaic. In other words, this translation is closer to the source than any subsequent renderings.
**Foremost amongst these scholars was Marija Gimbutas. As Joseph Campbell wrote in the foreword of her book, “The Language of the Goddess,” her “message here is of an actual age of harmony and peace in accord with the creative energies of nature which for a spell of some four thousand prehistoric years anteceded the five thousand of what James Joyce has termed the ‘nightmare’.”

A few years ago I walked into my local bakery and engaged the baker in our usual discussion, talking about her daily offering of baked goods and their ingredients. Often this dialogue would range over other topics, like the news of the day. Since I knew she was Native American, I referred to the Obama Administration’s recent settlements of decades old law suits—one for 1 billion dollars involving 41 tribes (4/11/2012) and the other for 3.4 billion dollars addressing US trust violations that affected over half a million Native Americans (11/27/2012). My intent in introducing this subject was to gain more perspective, specifically from a Native American. She did not disappoint. Quickly she pointed out that these monetary settlements cannot undue the moral, cultural, and personal harms inveighed against Indian tribes. Her father, as it happens, was a chief who had actually met then Senator Obama. She was a teenager at the time. She volunteered that the President was a “good person” who meant well, but likely did not understand the core problem, along with the rest of America.

Various legislation actions (such as the Indian Reorganization Act, the Indian Self-Determination Act, and the Indian Child Welfare Act) affirm the status of Indian nations as “domestic dependent nations” under Federal trusteeship. And the financial settlements just referenced only reinforce the status of tribal populations as dependents and devalue them further by equating the indignities they have suffered with monetary remuneration. What Americans fail to understand—including Congress and our Presidents—is that the tribes are not seeking the same citizenship rights of freed African slaves, but the freedom of self-determination as independent nations.

The courts have often ruled in favor of Indian treaty rights. But previous Administrations had refused for decades to settle their civil lawsuits. And Congress had ignored their many grievances for an even longer period, apparently assuming that they should be satisfied with legislation from the 1940’s that acknowledged their right to hold their cultural property and to determine guardianship of their children. But actual reconciliation with these Native Americans requires much more. They demand that their land and its natural resources be restored to them, as well as their right to self-government within its boundaries. There is no better example of their persistence in this demand than the Lakota’s refusal to accept the Supreme Court decision in 1980 to award the Sioux tribes 122 million dollars in exchange for their lands. That award has been held in a trust fund and is now worth about 1 billion dollars. The tribal chiefs continue to refuse any financial settlement in lieu of restoration of their lands. They fought a war, spilled their blood, and signed a treaty with the United States of America to protect their birthright to these lands. Monetary compensation is not any kind of appeasement to them. It is just a further humiliation.

My local baker knew her facts. Of course, they are readily available on the internet. But she could also embellish her knowledge with personal experience, having a tribal chief as a father and having met Barack Obama as a young girl. Like a giddy reporter about to uncover “breaking news,” I asked her how these two men got along. She laughed, “They got along fine, like they understood each other.” Then she added, “Maybe it’s because neither were born American.” Her response jolted me. It was totally unexpected. Naturally, I questioned her meaning. She explained that Obama was a Muslim and was born in Kenya. I tried to correct her understanding. But she insisted that she had found many sources on the internet that corroborated the fact of his birth and his religion. Besides, she explained, various TV news personalities were constantly reporting on the failure of the President to prove otherwise.

What is my purpose in sharing this story with you, my patient readers? Well, it illustrates how much we can learn from each other AND how polluted can be our information sources in the age of fake or insubstantial news. There is no question that my baker friend was sharing what she knew. The question remains, however, how she came to know what she knew. And that question goes to the heart of what we mean by “knowledge.”

In general, we know something as a result of our experience or of critical inquiry. When Descartes said, cognito, ergo sum (“I think, therefore I am”), he justified knowledge of his very existence upon his experience of thinking. Of course, our experience is more inclusive than our thinking: I know the keyboard I am using to write this blog, because I feel it under my fingertips. I also know the speed with which the moon circles the earth because it is mathematically calculable—or so I have been told. We trust our senses every day of our lives. But we never know enough to trust the logic or mathematical precision behind everything we are told. Living in the information age means that we are exposed to many “facts,” “theories,” and “evidence” that we can never really know in the sense of personally experiencing or critically justifying. Instead, we must trust our sources of information . . . or not. This trust is a matter of belief. My baker friend, for example, had firsthand experience of being born on an Indian Reservation and of living in a place to which she was organically connected and from which she was being systematically disowned. But what she knew about the President’s birthplace was based upon her trust or belief in the validity of information available on the internet, inadvertently affirmed by TV personalities, and even touted by such supposedly “creditable sources” as elected politicians.

At this moment, protestors are digging in for the winter at Standing Rock, North Dakota, to stop the last connecting link of a 1,172 mile long pipeline that will deliver half a million gallons of oil per day to Illinois. The point of contention is where this pipeline will cross the Missouri River. At risk is the water supply not only for the Indian Reservation but for many Americans living downstream of that river. Originally, the land transgressed by this pipeline was apportioned to the native Sioux tribes in the Treaty of 1851. But in 1867, another treaty was signed to cede “navigable rights” to the Federal government, to include “roads, railroads, telegraph lines, mail stations, and other public improvements” (italics are mine). The latter could not have foreseen oil pipelines that can provide a unique environmental hazard and, in this case, a health risks to individuals. Since these lands our held in trust by the Federal government, the Obama administration sought to delay construction of the pipeline until these hazards and risks could be reviewed and alternative options identified.** But in September the courts intervened and ruled in favor of the pipeline construction plans. President Obama, who many tribal leaders claim has done more for Indian rights than all previous Presidents combined, has asked for calm, demanding that peaceful protestors not be forcibly removed. Unfortunately, his requests have not been met. Both hired security forces and local constabulary have prodded protestors with attack dogs, rubber bullets, batons, and high powered water hoses. Many arrests have been made. And women—both Native Americans and other Americans—have even undergone strip searches while held in custody.

My question is simple: what do Americans actually know about the crux of this problem: this standoff between a pipeline corporation and Indian tribes; this confrontation between the Federal Administration and the Judicial Branch of government; and this obvious conflict between Treaty jurisdiction and morality. The only time the press has covered this standoff at Standing Rock is when pictures of demonstrators being beaten, bitten, hosed down, or shot are made available. And, of course, the press was quick to interview a movie star who was arrested in the melee. What the press failed to report was a joint statement issued immediately after the court decision by the Federal departments of Justice, Army and the Interior. That statement reads as follows:

This case has highlighted the need for a serious discussion on whether there should be nationwide reform with respect to considering tribes’ views on these types of infrastructure projects. Therefore, this fall, we will invite tribes to formal, government-to-government consultations on two questions: (1) within the existing statutory framework, what should the federal government do to better ensure meaningful tribal input into infrastructure-related reviews and decisions and the protection of tribal lands, resources, and treaty rights; and (2) should new legislation be proposed to Congress to alter that statutory framework and promote those goals.

The second point is most relevant. If you believe, as I do, that Federal trusteeship of Indian “dependent nations” is a treaty obligation that implies an ongoing review and determination of any necessary adjustments, then you must also recognize that obligation implies an underlying moral imperative. In other words, we Americans must demand a legislative response to any nationwide reform proposed by these government-to-government consultations.

Our legislators do respond to public pressure. And the public can be aroused at times to take action—to vote or contact a legislator for instance. We just witnessed 62 or so million Americans elect a new President they hoped would change the way Washington worked. The problem with public action in a democracy is whether it is motivated by passionate and informed positions, or merely by passion. An angry mob can overthrow a government. But an informed citizenry can demand legislative and administrative policies that serve their general welfare and effect real democratic change that suits the time. The key to this proposition is the quality of information provided to Americans. How can we know what to do or support if we only have questionable sources of information? How can we attain some level of certainty in what we think we know?

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**This blog was written last night. Minutes ago, a news bulletin reports that the Army Corps of Engineers has denied the easement the pipeline company, Energy Transfer Partners, required to cross the Missouri River. The Corps has honored the President’s request to find an alternative route for this pipeline. This will be the second rerouting. The first was incurred at the request of citizens living in Bismarck. That request was honored without challenge. This rerouting around an Indian Reservation will likely be challenged. It may represent the last shot across the bow by our sitting President. He is about to be replaced in a little over a month by a man who reportedly owns stock in this pipeline company> (Whether he does or not own stock in Energy Transfer Partners has not been substantiated. Energy Transfer Partners is actually a consortium also comprised of Sunoco and Phillips.) The President Elect has already stated he favors building this pipeline. There may yet be more chapters in the telling of this story.**
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“Knowledge” is a very broad concept that includes what we have learned, the learning process, and the creditability of what we have learned or believe we know. Given the enormity of the knowledge landscape, how can we have certainty about what we know? My baker’s experience has a personal psychological verification of its truth. And I learned something from her experience because I believed in its authenticity. That President Obama was born somewhere, on the other hand, is certain for it logically follows the self-evident truth that no human exists who was not born. Whether the President was born in Kenya or Hawaii, however, can only be derived from creditable evidence. Even trusted sources can allege “facts” without verifiable evidence. But even when verifiable evidence is provided—such as short and long form birth certificates, relevant newspaper clippings, or the testimony of public officials—some may choose not to belief the evidence or at least question the certainty of that evidence. In addition, much of what we think we know may in time be proven wrong, even though our knowledge is based upon personal experience, belief, or trusted sources. Certainty can seem allusive.

An artificial intelligence can use mathematical logic to answer specific question with certainty. It mirrors human intelligence in this way. It also can deliver highly probable, though not certain, results by canvasing a very large volume of data. In this manner, it not only mirrors, but actually exceeds human intelligence. You see, our database is much smaller and takes a lifetime to develop. As we age, we continuously store our experiences in memory, expand the extent of our knowledge, and mature our understanding of its content. When I was 21 years old, I was really sure of almost everything. Gradually, as I grew in experience, I realized how little I actually knew with any degree of certainty. We all benefit from sharing our differing perspectives. Other than logic and mathematics, no degree of certainty is achieved without a lifelong accumulation of our stored perceptions, of the creditable testimony of others, and of the induced results achieved by the power of our reasoning. Whatever certainty we may attain, then, is dependent upon a learning process that never ends.

We in America are at a turning point in our acquisition of knowledge. The process of learning, as I just described, requires more of us in this age of information. Each of us need to be dedicated to self-reflection, to disciplined evaluation of information sources, and to critical thinking that weighs all aspects of differing opinions. Obviously, we need to be served by honest and in-depth reporting and by elected officials dedicated to justice and freedom for all within our borders. What is happening at Standing Rock is just one example of how far we have strayed from these needs and, as a result, from the promise of our democracy. America is not easy. No nation has ever successfully broken down the barriers of tribal, ethnic, and religious inflexibility. But only by tearing down those barriers will our common humanity emerge. The promise of America cannot be realized unless we constantly strive to learn from each other, insist on fair and honest reporting, and demand responsive government that reflects both our needs and our moral integrity. Otherwise, problems like Standing Rock will continue to undermine our values and the effectiveness of our institutions. Consider where our nation would be today if we had chosen to learn from the Indian nations how to respect the land and become coequal custodians of the American continent. Problems like Standing Rock, or Devil’s Lake, or Black Hills would never have surfaced.

The way in which we communicate and receive information should reflect our desperate need to learn from each other and grow in understanding. Information used to gain influence, power, or financial benefit is propaganda. It serves no useful purpose in helping Americans understand issues like Standing Rock or further the ideals of a democratic and pluralist society. Only when our communication bridges the gap between perspectives, will it bring racial, ethnic, religious, and culturally diverse groups together.

And that coming together is still the unrealized promise of America.