Bob Schwartz

Adam and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.
Genesis 2:25

Clothing is a way to hide our imperfections, to make the most of what we are, to make the least of what we may not want others to see.

The overlapping phenomena of Trump and the pandemic have had many effects. One is that Americans were pushed by circumstance to make hard choices about what they did and said—choices that sometimes profoundly revealed what they really believe and who they really are.

Many people showed us what wars always show: we have heroes among us, models of who we can aspire to be.

Others were understandably conflicted, torn between an increasingly complex set of realities, in an environment of knowns and unknowns, of confusing information, so that the right and good wasn’t always apparent.

Others took the opportunity to shed whatever cover they once had, and without shame reveal that they had at some point abandoned common principles of right and good—if they ever had them at all.

Americans are stripped bare. How do we look?