Your vote is for love or for hate

A poem by Rabindranath Tagore is the epigraph at the beginning of Georgina Howell’s biography of Gertrude Bell:

We are all the more one because we are many

For we have made ample room for love in the gap where we are sundered.

Our unlikeness reveals its breath of beauty radiant with one common life,

Like mountain peaks in the morning sun.

Bell, an English woman born in 1880, was a linguist, archeologist, author, poet and Arabist. She worked tirelessly on behalf of the Arab cause during World War I and helped establish a free and independent Iraq at that war’s end.

I compare her efforts toward unity and independence of others with the words of Donald Trump, who tells his followers, “Immigrants are poisoning the blood of our country” and, who, if elected president, plans to deport millions of undocumented immigrants and create detention camps on U.S. soil, activating the military to do so (NBC News).

I think of the words of Tagore’s poem, that “our unlikeness reveals its breath and beauty of us all, radiant with one common life.” Yet instead of radiance and a peaceful and embracing people, rising “like mountain peaks in the morning sun,” there is violence in America, especially by those loyal to Mr. Trump and especially toward “the other.”

ABC News documented over 50 incidents where perpetrators (usually white males from teens to those in their 70s) take action against minorities or individuals who are against Mr. Trump’s agenda and after perpetuating a violent action upon their victims, have been quoted as saying, “I did this for Donald Trump.”

Is this who we want leading America? A man who perpetuates violence, who enshrines fear and hatred of the “other”?

Are we a nation making room for ample hate or one who creates “ample room for love?”

Vote!

Sincerely,

Christine Wardenburg-Skinner

Edison