Americans Away From Home

American hearts want to do the right thing. Democrats, Independents, Republicans, all want to do what's right; it's all in the defining.

Few Americans would have trouble defining that murder is wrong. Few Americans would agree that any of the heinous crimes we see commonly today, from maiming to rape to genocide, might be justified. Few Americans, if any, would fail to understand the pain of parents losing children from war or any other cause.

Americans are big on fairness. We like just. We like appropriate. We like giving the little guy a fair shake.

Most Americans have hearts as big as the whole outdoors. That's the expression, and I see no reason to not embrace it. Americans are still known for our compassion, our justice, our hearts.

It's just that our compassion has taken some truly wayward turns. Do you think most Americans feel compassion for the innocent Iraqis hurt in our relentless march to free Iraq from tyranny? When Americans see the haunting photos of faces caught by tsunamis, earthquakes, floods, the extremes of weather's hurtful power, do you think we feel no pain?

In San Francisco I once heard Spalding Gray interview a marvelous man who told how AIDS had ripped his friends' lives from him until he cared so much he could care no more. This is "compassion fatigue", scourge of carers, aid workers, people with heart.

Americans are strangling with compassion fatigue. With our big hearts, our generous nature, we're not a cynical bunch. Yet the words become code: Katrina, infrastructure, social security, medical care, schools, human rights, economy. Environment, security, safety. War.

Have a heart. Americans, with our big hearts, want things to change. Change is not a euphemism for the same policies in a Republican cloth coat. Change is believing something better may still be possible.

Americans have big hearts. Our big hearts ache. That is what the election of 2008 is about.

Carole