Someone said that we’ve never been worse off as a country than we are now with our polarization and the pandemic.

Let’s look at a couple of things.

In August 1814, the British army set fire to the White House. It seemed like the revolution and everything after could be for naught. We pulled through.

In 1828, President Andrew Jackson threatened to hang his own Vice President, John Caldwell Calhoun, in South Carolina.

On May 22, 1856, Congressman Preston Brooks nearly beat Senator Charles Sumner to death on the floor on the Senate. The reason? Sumner wanted to abolish slavery.

In the 1860’s, the country split in two and went to war with itself for the primary reason of slavery. After 4 bloody, brutal years, our President was shot.

In the 1920’s and 30’s, many Americans lost everything they had. Organized crime was normal. Abject poverty was normal. The Klan marched on Washington.

On December 7, 1941, Japanese kamikazes attacked an American Naval Base, and we went to war.

In the 1960’s, a President was shot and killed. His brother was shot and killed. Martin Luther King Jr was shot and killed. George Wallace was shot and paralyzed. Malcolm X was shot and killed.

Soldiers returning from war were spit on.

In the 80’s, the AIDS epidemic swept through vulnerable American populations. People were killed, and the government response was, at best, ambivalent.

On September 11, 2001, we were attacked and 2,996 people died. We are still at war.

We are in a trying time now. There is no doubt. We are dealing with resurgent racism, a pandemic, and a distrust of our institutions that seems catastrophic.

But we have been through the fire before. And we have come out stronger every time.