America Unraveling (My New Video With 222,000 Views on My Facebook Page)

I’m a white male in North America’s upper middle class.

This inglorious inheritance of slaveholders, misogynists, and war-makers shapes what I experience and, just as importantly, do not experience—i.e., what black men undergo in our country’s criminal and judicial system or even during casual traffic stops and what women of all races and classes endure when confronted by our culture’s everyday sexism and what gay women and men face in the daily bigotry (or worse in the all-too-common violence) they encounter.

My subjective preferences are rooted in unearned privilege (not to mention a particularly eccentric background, which I describe in my memoir Crazy For God). That notwithstanding I hope that at least some of what I say here in this video “America Unraveling” will exceed my glaring limitations. I dare to hope this because of what I believe binds us all together, left, right, center, black, white, male, female, gay, straight, trans, brown–and transcends our differences: a shared love for our children, grandchildren, friends, family; that vulnerability we experience when held hostage by unconditional love.

That love today is expressed by me as my resistance to Trump. My mother’s ancestors (the Merritt family) on her mother’s side came to America on the Mayflower. This is not a proud heritage. Those colonists lied and killed. (Ask a Pequot Native American!)

That said my Marine son John fought for this country. I have a stake in our history and our future. My “stake” in our future has several names—namely my 5 grandchildren’s names. It’s for them I resist Trump. It’s for them I speak out for a better future.

Please watch my 6-minute video below.