Moral injury

I found myself surprisingly moved to read this deadpan description of one of the  president-elect's courtesy calls, by way of Heather Cox Richardson. 

Among the phone calls Biden has had with world leaders was one today with Pope Francis. According to the call readout, the pope offered Biden blessings and congratulations; Biden thanked the pope for promoting the common bonds of humanity and said he hoped to work together on issues that touched on their shared belief “in the dignity and equality of all humankind.” He singled out “caring for the marginalized and the poor, addressing the crisis of climate change, and welcoming and integrating immigrants and refugees into our communities"—all areas in which the pope has called on global leaders to take action, and on which the Biden administration’s policies are expected to differ from its predecessor’s.

Not only has Donald Trump neglected his presidential responsibility to respond to the threat to our lives posed by the virus. He has also outraged whatever instinct we may have toward common humanity in precisely the three arenas that Biden raised with the pope.

It's not just that Trump is a childish, self-centered boor. He has worked to rip apart human solidarity wherever it might exist, a tack which always injures the most vulnerable people first and most.

The practical necessity of deposing this monster has required focusing on the mechanics of elections. And so many of us did.

But should Joe Biden complete the process of reviving a somewhat functional federal government, many of us are still going to need healing from four years of moral assault. There are plenty of material wounds, but we have also suffered invisible, but all-too-real, wounds to whatever compass lives within us.