11.6.2026 – was about kindness

was about kindness
American citizens showed
nation’s true colors

Let me start by admitting that YES I KNOW that the The Niagara Parks Commission, a self-funded Crown agency of the Government of Ontario DID NOT turn blue lights on Niagara Falls on Tuesday Night.

Instead of saluting the Niagara-Falls-like cascade of blue votes cast in the United States, The Niagara Parks Commission scheduled the falls to glow teal from 10:00 p.m. to 10:15 p.m. on November 3 in recognition of Alzheimer’s Awareness Month.

But the picture was too good to ignore and too representative of what happened Tuesday night to not use.

And what happened Tuesday night?

“American citizens rose up and showed the world their nation’s truer colors” in the words of Margaret Sullivan in her article, There’s a new feeling in America as kindness drives out cruelty.

Ms. Sullivan writes:

They showed it to be a place that values decency. A place capable of choosing diversity, not mocking it. A place strong enough to say “enough, already”.

The global caricature of the ugly American as an ignoramus in thrall to an immoral cult leader got pushed aside in this election that turned both houses of Congress, and many a governor’s office, away from Maga and toward potential reform.

“I think it was about kindness,” reflected my neighbor, a registered nurse and French immigrant, as I encountered her on her dog walk on Wednesday morning.

Ms. Sullivan closes with … it’s a move in a most welcome direction. And a retreat from the distressing years where “this is not America” had to sustain us.

It’s a promise, too – of better days ahead, of reform and accountability, and of an era when we may once again think of America and feel proud.

Anyone who reads this blog knows that I have walked the edge of despair over the direction the current government was taking this country.

So many norms and expectations were outright ignored that I could not square where this country was when you looked at where this country had been.

In the words of Mr. Lincoln, The fiery trial through which we pass could not arrive at the point where we were and somehow still mean anything.

Again from Mr. Lincoln, It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion.

That cause that those honored dead gave their last full measure of devotion could not end up being all about ballroom.

Just thinking it through that way made me sick to stomach.

Then …

Then Tuesday happened.

American citizens rose up and showed the world their nation’s truer colors.

It’s a promise, too – of better days ahead, of reform and accountability, and of an era when we may once again think of America and feel proud.

It was about kindness!