Perhaps no lyric ever written so succinctly sums up my belief in the idea of America more than these words from that song. Those words cut through me harder than they normally do. We’re losing who we are. The list of things we’ll do is getting longer and the list of things we won’t, shorter. This week, 42 million Americans are facing their Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits running dry because of the shutdown.

I am reminded daily that real life, done well, can be instructive for our politics and that real life, done poorly, mirrors our politics.

In our nation, we often value toughness more than gentleness. We like our leaders tough. We like our athletes tough. We like our movie protagonists tough. We don’t even mind when they are flawed. Flawed is fine; we all are. But I feel we used to gravitate toward tough guys whose compass still pointed somewhere toward fairness and compassion.

The President of the United States of America brazenly and unabashedly, in the plain light of day and not in some smoke-filled back room, called for gerrymandering to retain the Republican majority.