You would have thought that when Donald Trump came down with Coronavirus, it would have caused a shift by this maskless president who discounts the advice and knowledge of scientists. You would also have thought his supporters, who ridicule mask wearing and flaunt their freedom to resist guidelines to social distance, would now see the consequences of recklessness and recognize the seriousness of Covid-19, which is clearly not a hoax. But no. Instead, only a few days after the president was diagnosed and hospitalized, news reports confirm that the political divisions in the U.S. remain the same or have intensified.

Trump supporters are still ardent. Like the president, they don’t want to admit they were wrong. Rather than acknowledging Trump was foolish to deny the severity of the virus and to refuse to wear a mask, they accept and declare that it’s everywhere and can’t be avoided. He is still their “savior,” or as right wing white evangelicals say, the “chosen one,” like America itself, favored by God. Redemption hasn’t happened, and neither has the Second Coming, but as in past centuries when messianic fervor struck (and God knows, we really do need redemption in America), Trump’s followers remain faithful, their hopes of salvation just pushed into the future.

So what will happen this November 3rd, now less than a month away? As Joe Biden says, “the soul of America” is at stake. I believe Democracy is at stake, as well as “American Exceptionalism,” a term that now seems heavily ironic. Yes, we are exceptional. We’ve had more deaths from Covid-19 than any other country. Exceptionalism and election are two ideas that actually intertwine. For exceptionalism has been the belief since the first settlers that America is God’s chosen or elect country with its people and lands blessed. With the American Revolution and her Declaration of Independence from the authority of an overbearing monarch in Britain, America was supposed to be a beacon of light to the world—a concept evoking the words of the prophet Isaiah who in chapter 60 described Jerusalem restored, the people redeemed, in the “end days.”

This notion of America’s exceptionalism as a light to the world--revived by former President Ronald Reagan—has been a core principle of Trump’s, Make America Great Again, aka MAGA. And because of its biblical foundation, even if Trump wasn’t aware of it, the president’s touting of American exceptionalism has been embraced by his evangelical core, a position even ultra-conservative Catholics can join. And that’s because the devotion to their “Savior” and the president is often indistinguishable from one another. No wonder his rallies resemble megachurch revivals wherever they occur.

We are exceptional alright. These days it feels like we’re losing our image of that shining beacon the world used to look up to and consider an example to emulate. The president’s friends are autocrats and dictators instead of leaders of democratic countries. Rather than welcoming immigrants and refugees, as the Statue of Liberty promises (a statue given to America by France on the anniversary of the American Revolution), under Trump immigrants seeking refuge have been “detained,” resulting in family separations, children put in cages and women given unconsented and unexplained “gynecological procedures” that sterilized them. Trump is limiting immigration while expressing the hope that we get immigrants from “Nordic countries.” This all sounds frighteningly familiar to me. Moreover, under Trump and his cohorts in government, we have a policy of isolation, much as America did in the 1930’s, a time when America restricted immigration, particularly from undesirable countries and populations. We have also withdrawn from the Paris Climate Accord, as if there is the belief that America will be exceptional and unaffected by the devastation of the climate, just as the president assumed he would be unaffected by Covid-19. But there are no borders to these disasters, no walls that can keep them away, or any assurance they’ll only affect your enemies.

Now the United States is severly diminished in the eyes of the world. Other nations no longer admire us and have closed their borders to Americans to keep out the plague.

In 1783, in the aftermath of the American Revolution and a time of hope, Reverend Ezra Stiles, one of a long line of Protestant ministers who became President of Yale, preached a lenghy sermon that was soon printed. The United States elevated to glory and honor. Stiles declared that Moses’s words to biblical Israel in Deuteronomy 26:10 (“And to make thee high above all nations which he hath made, in praise, and in name, and in honour; and that thou mayest be an holy people unto the Lord thy God, as he hath spoken.”) were not about Jewish Israel but about “God’s American Israel.”  America was fulfilling the prophecy, and Stiles envisions a glorious future for the new nation. “This great American Revolution, this recent political phenomenon of a new sovereignty” will be “contemplated by all nations” (463). Not only its model of polity but its practice of “toleration” “religious liberty,” and “benevolence” will spread to other nations. Stiles’s rapturous sermon gave Enlightenment ideals of liberty and toleration an Old Testament foundation, but had a Protestant religious purpose, for he envisions reformed (Protestant) Christianity spreading around the world. This biblically based American Exceptionalism is still quite alive today.

But it seems as if we are more like the English people John Milton described in early 1660, the people who were about to bring back their king, once England’s experiment in republicanism had failed. Milton too, earlier in his career had written of England as God’s special nation, but now he compared the English to the biblical Israelites who wanted to return to Egypt. They had been delivered from slavery but found the work of liberty too hard. Milton predicted that if they supported the king and “put their necks under kingship,” their actions would make them “a scorn and derision to all our neighbors.” This was the phrase that sadly came to my mind as I watched the presidential debate knowing that the rest of the world was also watching.

We will see what the election will bring. Everything is at stake. God help us.

For as long as I can remember, I have loved color and my passion for it has only become more powerful over time.  But now it has taken on a new meaning, with the increased polarization in our society, in our politics, even in names and slogans like, “white supremacists,” and, “black lives matter.” I do not pretend to be colorblind; but I have no desire to live in a monochrome world. I believe we are all born with a divine spark, though it can be damaged, hurt, distorted, maybe even extinguished. White supremacist ideology is, to me, literally hate-ful.

Am I white? Yes, I suppose, though I hate such labels since they only divide us. I am a “white” Jewish woman who grew up in Fairfield County Connecticut in the 1950s and early 60s. The town had a statue of Nathan Hale and notices in the local newspaper about the Daughters of the American Revolution, which made me feel like I didn’t exactly fit in. What was I? What was my identity in this little town?

Fairfield County, especially where I lived, was WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant). That is where social status resided, though in the next town over there were a number of Puerto Ricans, Italians and blacks.  Jews were not considered quite white, but neither were Catholics back then. This is partly why Isabel Wilkerson’s’s brilliant new book “Caste” hits home for me, though I’d add that the caste system in America has always included ethnicity and religion—and still does. My friends in high school were Italian Catholic, Irish Catholic, Polish Catholic, one or two what we now call “black,” and two Jewish girls. We were all, I guess, the outsiders.

These days, they say Jews are part of the white majority. But don’t tell that to white supremacists who don’t consider Jews white at all—To them, Jews are part of the “Other” that threatens their white, Protestant America. Jews can also get demonized from the other side when some Blacks consider Jews a part of the white oppressors. The problem with identity politics is that it forces one into a category that may not fit, that discounts some of the things that make us richer, more diverse, more interesting, and (in my opinion) more human.

We in America live in an increasingly polarized world. Things are being reduced in so many ways to an “either,” “or,” and to a binary, or a dichotomy, which always leads to conflict, resulting in an Us vs Them environment. Paradoxically, this is happening under a president who has been undoing the notion of “truth,” calling news “fake,” Coronavirus (and other things) a “hoax,” and peddling false conspiracy theories in the service of dividing the nation into two.

It is a muddled, frightening mess, framing a world without clarity or beauty. So much has been stripped of color and vibrance and grace. So, the best I can do for myself—besides teaching tolerance and critical thinking-- is to surround myself with color, creating a spectrum that brings into my world as much color as I can to represent the kind of universe I want to live in.

When I was young I lived in a house of gloom and doom with a father always forecasting the final apocalyptic war. So, I always had a fantasy that when I grew up, I would create my own place. I would design and make my own wallpaper, my own fabric and paint the walls different colors. Every room would be distinctive and radiant. To this day, I sometimes even dream in color.

Our first house after we got married was a modest little yellow cape cod with white trim and black shutters that Tony, my husband, gave me free reign to alter. I spent hours at a local store, looking at wallpaper books and bringing home samples. I needed paper for the living room, the dining nook, the hallway and stairway to the second floor. I wanted it all to flow as you went from room to room. I spent so many happy hours thinking, shopping and changing. I still remember that house like a first love. For the living room, I found a soft blue/green/grey paper with one-inch white diamond lattice-work. The adjacent breakfast room that looked out to the backyard had colorful songbirds sitting on branches. The ivory wallpaper in the center hallway and continuing up the stairway had delicate crimson rosebuds that picked up the color of the burgundy wool runner on the stairs. The morning light coming in made it feel like a garden, even in winter. Then, I thought of painting the outside of the front door, but couldn’t find the exact color I wanted. A woman at the paint store agreed to mix a sample to my specifications, which turned into something between soft crimson and deep magenta. No one had a front door like that. It made for a unique look and truly became a home that was me inside and out!

Sixteen years later, we had to move, and though our next house was larger and newer, it wasn’t interesting, and to this day, it’s the little yellow house I dream of. But I rolled up my sleeves, ripped out the dull beige wall-to-wall carpet in the living room and hall; replacing it with a dusty rose that was simply beautiful. Not everyone’s idea of a neutral color, but it is! I couldn’t find wallpaper I wanted for the boring long hallway. But a few years later I was in London, and one beautiful day, instead of going to the British Museum to do research, I walked down Kings Road in Chelsea and discovered Designer’s Guild. Walking into one of the stores overwhelmed me with happiness. All those amazing fabrics and wall papers, which were absolute works of art with so many intense colors. They were just what I sought, but admittedly expensive. I took home some swatches of material that were on sale. Maybe I’d make a pillow, or a wall hanging. I waited five years, saved up, and finally Designer’s Guild had exactly the wallpaper I’d been waiting for: Ivory with slightly darker ivory medallions stamped on it. It was perfect against the rose carpet.

Yes, I confess, I am obsessed with all colors (except grey or beige unless it’s got warmth and intensity). Even my walls aren’t stark white, but linen white. I try to even eat colorful food to liven up my plate, because to me, color is life.

Sixteen years ago we moved to New York City. It’s only a rental apartment, but I’ve made it more mine than anyplace I’ve ever lived. I remember walking into it and thinking, “all white walls; how boring,” but then thinking they could be my canvas. My apartment home is eclectic. A few things I moved from our house, but also old furniture from the home I grew up in, all given new life once cleaned and polished. Tables, stands and chairs that originally were from China and the Middle East, in dark rosewood, mahogany and maybe walnut. A chair dating over a century old from England (who knows how it ended up in my family home?) has been rebuilt and reupholstered in magenta velvet. When I have traveled to conferences in other countries over the last fifteen years, I’ve brought back colorful things that remind me of those places and the people I met while there. Cobalt and emerald green glasses from Venice and Finland, a small glass painting in various shades of blues of the meeting of sky, mountains and sea on the coast of Wales.

Sometimes I feel like I’m living within my own painting. Gabbeh rugs with desert images. Overdyed blue-green Persian runners. Two small Moroccan rugs, one in coral with black large diamond lines, the other various shades of purple and plum. An old threadbare red Persian runner. A multicolor oriental rug for the dining room, a larger one for the living room. Those two rugs don’t match, but they get along. I look around and I see so many colors: sea-green, grey-blue, sage, navy gold, burgundy, deep red, rust, rose, lavender, pink, yellow, grey. Colors of sky, sea, clouds, earth, trees and sunsets. A few crystals hang in the windows. At certain times of the year, rays from the setting sun strike the crystals, and create rainbows on the walls and ceiling. They move and then disappear, much like our lives, but for the moment, it’s magic.

All those colors speak to each other and the conversation fills me with joy. There is a feeling of balance and harmony. Two colors might clash or be boring (at least to me), but lots of different colors together can create beauty. My dream environment inspires me, lifts my spirits, but it also gives me hope that such a thing could exist in the outside world… but only if we want it badly enough, and if enough of us want it to be, then I’m confident we can make it so.