James Earl Jones in the film version of Cry, the Beloved Country.
By Paul V. DeMarco
Guest Columnist
Alan Paton’s 1948 novel, Cry, the Beloved Country, explores the South African apartheid system, which was formally instituted in the year of its publication. The protagonist, Stephen Kumalo, is a black minister of a rural congregation whose son commits a murder in a robbery gone wrong. The white man he kills, Arthur Jarvis, is, ironically, one of the few white people who is actively opposing the new apartheid regime.
Paton’s book was formative for me. It heightened my awareness of racial injustice in South Africa, America, and around the world. Recently, I have returned to the book with a different perspective, as I reflect on the changes in my country since Donald Trump was elected. The current injustices are different from those dealt with in the novel, but have been profoundly disquieting. My previous readings have been empathetic, finding my way into Kumalo’s sorrow and anger with a reader’s detachment. However, watching our new administration operate, my detachment is gone. I have become Kumalo.
In the decade since Trump entered presidential politics, I have, despite my grave misgivings about his character and rhetoric, tried to be generous in my view of him. Some of his policies make sense and align with my own. I think his border policy is more sensible than Biden’s was. He is correct to treat China as an existential threat. I agree with him that biological men should not be in women’s sports or other women-only spaces.
But, to my Republican friends I say, you could have had those policies with dozens of other candidates. None of them would have done to our country what Trump has done. For years his defenders chided his opponents for being worried about “a few mean tweets.” I don’t like trash-talking in politics. It simply makes compromising more difficult, and every piece of significant legislation involves compromise. Since it has become an accepted part of the American dialogue, I doubt there will be any turning back. Nevertheless, calling out other world leaders, especially the presidents of Canada and Mexico, our closest neighbors and two of our closest allies, is gratuitous and counterproductive.
However, the deep, agonizing cry that is silently reverberating in many Americans’ hearts is for Ukraine. This is exactly the kind of country that America should be supporting. I’m not a war monger. I have no interest in the U.S. starting or prolonging a war. I grieve for the dead and wounded on both sides and their families. As a physician, I have seen how tragedies affect patients and loved ones. It is impossible for a person to experience war and come away better for the experience.
Ukraine had no choice but to enter this war. They were invaded without provocation by a much larger country run by a murderous dictator. They responded just as America would, with searing rage and all the firepower they could muster. Most analysts expected the war to be over in weeks. Instead the Ukrainians have bravery held off the Russians for three years. Their democratically-elected president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, showed commendable courage when he chose to stay rather than flee (as opposed to Trump, who dodged the draft, or his minion Josh Hawley, who ran for his life during the attack on the Capitol). Zelenskyy has made it easy for America to support him, asking only for weapons and ammunition. No American soldier will die in Ukraine.
I suspect we will recover quickly from much of the stupidity and vanity emanating from the White House, e.g., the Gulf of America, the turning of the South Lawn into a Tesla lot, or the threats to take over Greenland, Canada, and the Panama Canal. However, Trump’s choice to forsake Zelenskyy for Vladimir Putin, an authoritarian who censors free media, jails and kills his opponents, and rules by fear, will stain our flag for years to come. The simple question is “Which of these countries aspires to be more like America?” That was, until recently, the way we chose allies. America is the best and brightest hope for the planet. Our democratic system, as fractious and flawed as it is, and our political discourse, as polluted as it is, are still the envy of the world. We are free to say and do everything we want as long as it does not infringe on the rights of our fellow citizens. We will only remain free if we support other countries trying to become like us.
I have had my share of disagreements with past presidents, both those I voted for and those I didn’t. I have been angry before, but I have never felt that the president was trying to contort the United States into a country we don’t recognize and don’t want to be. In the novel, Kumalo says of his son Absalom after he has committed the murder, “Who knows if he ever thought of what he did, of what it meant to his mother and father, to the people of his village, to the white man he had killed, to the wife and children that were left desolate. Who knows if he had remorse, or if he wept for his broken country?”
When I read Kumalo’s last question over forty years ago at the University of Virginia, I never thought I would be asking it of my president.
A version of this column appeared in the March 19th, 2025 edition of the Post and Courier-Pee Dee.
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