Why we've lost those kumbaya moments

We need to be less fearful of our fellow citizens and less tolerant of their manipulators

There was a time when a summertime campfire featured “Kumbaya” with the marshmallows.Now the word has a different meaning. (Photo by Mike Erskine on Unsplash)

---

Nobody sings “Kumbaya” anymore. There was a time when the sincere, simple melody recorded by the likes of Pete Seeger and Joan Baez was a staple of social protests and campfire singalongs. Sometimes swaying with linked arms, or maybe watching sparks fly up into the summertime night, we would sing with open heart and clear voice, in what might have been imagined by some as a plea for the oppressed, but which seemed to me, as a youngster, more simply a call for fellowship.  

But we’re not so much into togetherness anymore. Nowadays the word “kumbaya” is mainly used derisively, describing what nobody wants to be seen welcoming. There will be no kumbaya moments here, politicians have assured us repeatedly in recent years: No singing kumbaya regarding relations with China, nor in negotiations on federal spending, nor in interactions with the media. Standing firm is what politics is all about these days, not linking arms with anybody. The denigration of the very idea of kumbaya has become a staple of political rhetoric.¹

It's sad, really, that both the idea and the song have fallen from favor. To be sure, there was a naivete about it: I remember being told by a youth leader, “Kumbaya means ‘come by here’ in the African language,” back before I was old enough to realize that 3,000 languages are spoken in Africa, none of them including that word, and before scholars figured out that the song likely originated not in Africa, but in the American south. Our taste in music these days, anyway, goes beyond that simple triad arpeggio, so maybe the “Kumbaya” earworm is one whose time has mostly expired, like polkas and bubblegum pop.²

Yet it’s hard not to be nostalgic for those simpler, less divisive times. Couldn’t we all use a little more kumbaya and a little less cacophony?

To be clear, there’s good reason to fight for what you believe — notably, when compromise would mean yielding on a matter of morality. For those of us who consider truth-telling to be a moral imperative — it’s in the Ten Commandments, folks — that makes standing up to political lies an essential task. In a political climate where truth is so often subjugated to ambition, harmony is an increasingly rare sound.

Discord isn’t what most of us crave, after all, and it ought not to be all that we allow ourselves to hear. First, it’s bad for us: Northeastern University researchers published a study in 2022 suggesting that political polarization “significantly drives stress and anxiety among Americans,” which is affecting Americans’ health. Second, it’s damaging to society, in the widely reported fraying of communities along partisan lines, which is making the country almost ungovernable.³

So it makes sense that we ought to do what we can to enhance both our awareness and our enjoyment of the ways in which we’re more alike than separate. Those moments of cohesion, after all, might help sustain us for the fights that matter. Maybe those battles don’t need to be at the forefront of our daily lives, making kumbaya moments all but impossible.

There’s hope for more cohesion, a Massachusetts reader of The Upstate American noted last week; he saw it in our reaction to the eclipse. “How is it that so many Americans gathered, smiled, wallowed in shared experience?” he asked. “How could an infrequent U.S. visitor like the eclipse shadow all the resentment and divergence?” He expressed a wish that the shared spirit of the event might somehow be repeated.

A similarly hopeful view emerged the next day, coincidentally, in an essay published by the co-founders of the news site Axios, Jim VandenHei and Mike Allen. They described tribal political wars, cable TV and social media as creating a “reality distortion bubble” that is warping us into believing that we’re surrounded by conflict. Yes, our politics seem “hopelessly divided,” they acknowledged, but that’s because “fringe figures” commandeer our attention, creating “nonsense… oozing into our lives.”⁴

In fact, they noted, a new poll finds that roughly 90 percent of Americans agree on the importance of our key rights — the right to vote, to equal protection under the law, to freedom of religion and speech, and to privacy. Yet for all that agreement, we’re distracted by “edge-case outrages,” VandenHei and Allen wrote, which are amplified by politicians and the media — “when, in most cases, the numbers show that in reality, things are next to normal.”⁵

Part of the problem is that social media platforms are powered by the people who draw the biggest followings, which they gain by being provocative and partisan. That drives news coverage, which is increasingly influenced by the intentionally distorted views of Fox News. You can’t blame people for responding to fears they’ve been force-fed by dishonest information brokers.

But consider the folks you encounter every day who might have political views unlike your own. In my case, that group might include the guy chainsawing the tree that fell in my yard during the last spring snowstorm, the team fixing up the downstairs bedroom, the woman who keeps track of the goings and comings, and the well-being, of everybody in our neighborhood, and even the college classmates on a Zoom call with me this week. I don’t need to lecture them on the fallacies of what they’ve distilled from Fox News; I need to appreciate that they’re good people with the same goals as I have — including a good life for those we love, and reasons to hope that tomorrow will be better than today.

For those of us who track the daily developments of our politics and the dysfunction of our government, there’s comfort in realizing that most people don’t share our fixation, or its resulting anxiety. That ought to make us less unsettled about how we view our own community and the way the world will turn the day after tomorrow. Rather than worrying about a new civil war, then, we might imagine working to restore the sensibility Will Rogers expressed when he said, “We can get hot and bothered quicker over nothing, and cool off faster, than any nation in the world.”

But there’s a limit to where we can absorb those good feelings. We cannot afford to legitimize that media-grabbing extremism and the manipulation of public opinion by those loud voices from the fringe. The appreciation we may feel for our fellow citizens, even those who seem quite unlike ourselves, doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be worried about what’s not part of that “reality distortion machine” cited by the Axios authors — including, especially, the danger to the world posed by Donald Trump. That’s real, and the distortion isn’t in its honest depiction by many in the media, but in how it is being swept aside by Trump’s enablers.

There is a reason, after all, why Trump’s bid to return to the White House is opposed by the two most recent Republican Vice Presidents, Dick Cheney and Mike Pence, as well as by his former Secretary of Defense and Attorney General, two of his former chiefs of staff and his appointed Director of National Intelligence. Trump’s toxic narcissism and careless approach to serious global challenges present a threat to us all.

Tragically, those perils are being ignored by most of the incumbent Republican establishment, and they are dragging with them people who have trusted the party and can’t shake the sense that, surely, all those officials wouldn’t be willing to sacrifice the common good for partisan gain. They are.

That’s not a distortion, friends; it’s a reality. And it’s why those of us who see it clearly need to pay attention to that message of the Axios authors, and not be distracted by the sense that we’re surrounded by hostile fellow Americans. No, those good folks aren’t the problem we need to confront. Rather, our focus must be on the political and media players who are cynically guiding us toward what could be a calamitous second Trump presidency.

As much as we might crave the sort of comfort that many of us felt in 20^th century America — that is, before the failures of this century so infected our society — we can’t let wishful thinking lure us to walk arm-in-arm with those who would sacrifice our principles for a Trumpist future. Kumbaya moments can’t be an objective; they have to be a byproduct of a shared sensibility, earned by a society that promises fairness and security for all.

That would be worth singing about, and I’d meet you around that campfire.

1. https://www.npr.org/2012/01/13/145059502/when-did-kumbaya-become-such-a-bad-thing

2. https://blogs.loc.gov/folklife/2018/02/kumbaya-history-of-an-old-song/

3. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36712795/

4. https://www.axios.com/2024/04/10/political-polarization-america-rahm-emanuel

5. https://www.axios.com/2024/04/09/america-politics-divided-polarization-data

---

NEWSCLIPS FROM THE UPSTATES

Dispatches from our common ground *

Wherein each week we look around what we call the nation’s Upstates — those places just a bit removed from the center of things — to find illuminating news and intriguing viewpoints, which you might not otherwise see.

This week, we share reporting published here:

• Bremerton, Wash. (Kitsap Sun, kitsapsun.com)

• Wilmington, N.C. (Wilmington Star-News, starnewsonline.com)

• Peoria, Ill. (Peoria Journal Star, pjstar.com)

• Corning, N.Y. (Corning Leader, the-leader.com)

NOTE: The complete “Newsclips from the Upstates” section, and The Upstate American Midweek Extra Edition, which is sent to email boxes on some Wednesdays, are available only to paid subscribers. Thanks for your support!

WASHINGTON

Non-profit groups step up to save Dungeness crabs

In Puget Sound, more than 142,000 harvestable-size Dungeness crabs die every year in abandoned crab pots, according to reporting in the Kitsap Sun by Pelyu Lin. The 11,000 derelict pots, long abandoned, continue to catch crabs, which damages the underwater ecology and crab harvest that helps support indigenous tribes. Now a plan to clean up lost crab pots in Port Gamble Bay and the northeast end of the Hood Canal is taking off, thanks to the Northwest Straits Foundation. The group will use sonar boats to locate the cages, then send divers to retrieve them. But the plan is incomplete: Because divers can only work at depths up to 100 feet, they may be able to remove only 200 pots. The effort is funded by Washington State. This cries out for a federal solution. But see next story.

NORTH CAROLINA

Can whales and commercial fishing co-exist?

The once-plentiful right whale is endangered; only 356 of the species are known to exist, down from 483 in 2010. Four have been confirmed dead this year, three of them likely due to boat strikes, according to reporting by Gareth McGrath in the Wilmington Star-News. But the concern of environmental advocates is being met with pushback from the fishing industry, which is upset over a proposal forwarded to the White House that would lower the boat speed limit along a stretch of North Carolina and Georgia shore. The existing go-slow zones, which run from November through April, would be extended to a broader area, and to smaller boats. An industry spokesman predicted an "economic catastrophe" for charter boat captains and the coastal communities that rely on the customers the fishermen attract to fill hotels, beach rentals, bars and restaurants throughout the year. That argument doesn’t sway wildlife advocates. “The federal government has absolutely no excuse for delaying a vessel-speed rule while we watch these poor whales pile up,” one spokeswoman said. And let’s assume that the White House is in no hurry to take this action, considering the political risk to Joe Biden in a swing state.

ILLINOIS

What’s the “Coolest Thing Made in Illinois?”

The Illinois Manufacturers’ Association sponsors an annual “Coolest Thing Made in Illinois” contest, and the winner this year was the pride of Peoria, according to reporting by Cassidy Waigand in the Peoria Journal Star: a 4,400-horsepower Komatsu mining truck, which can haul up to 400 tons. It’s manufactured in Peoria, and won out over 200-plus other entries. Last year’s winner, manufactured in Rockford, was the Rosenberg Moon Habitat. Cool.

NEW YORK

And the award for best small-town cultural scene goes to…

In a competition among communities under 25,000 population, a national award for Best Small Town Cultural Scene has been presented to Corning, a community along the state’s Southern Tier. (Non-Upstaters: It’s a four-hour drive from Manhattan.) Corning benefits by being the headquarters of a Fortune 500 company (formerly known as Corning Glass Works) that has richly endowed cultural institutions. Among the attractions: Corning Museum of Glass, the Rockwell Museum, the artistically vibrant “Gaffer District” and Corning’s proximity to the Finger Lakes, with its abundant recreational opportunities, wineries and distilleries. Caveat: It’s a Readers’ Choice award sponsored by USAToday, which owns the newspaper in Corning.

DOWNLOAD OR LISTEN NOW: MORE FROM THE UPSTATE AMERICAN

IF YOU’RE A READER who wants to hear more of Rex Smith’s views, check www.wamc.org for his weekly on-air commentary aired by Northeast Public Radio. Here’s a link to the latest essay. And if your interest is specific to American media, you can download the podcast of The Media Project, the 30-minute nationally-syndicated discussion that Rex leads each week on current issues in journalism. In the states where Northeast Public Radio is heard, the program airs at 3 p.m. each Friday, and is rebroadcast at 6 p.m. Sunday. You can tune in live, too, at www.wamc.org. It has been called “a half-hour of talk about finding and telling the truth.” It’s often worth your time!

---

Thanks for taking the time to read The UPSTATE AMERICAN, and for sharing our love and hope for this great land. We hope you’ll continue to join us on this, *our common ground.

-Rex Smith