Dear Editor,
Last month, I came across a troubling video: a woman shouting the n-word at a toddler in a public park.
The footage alone was appalling, but what lingered, and has stayed with me since, was the wave of online defenders who excused, even celebrated, her behavior as some kind of righteous stand. It would be easy to dismiss these comments as fringe or anomalous, but they reflect something deeper: a dark and growing belief system rooted in fear, resentment, and the dangerous illusion that blessings are a zero-sum game.
This wasn’t just a random internet flare-up. It was a window into something more insidious taking root in parts of the country: a belief that blessings are a limited commodity, to be hoarded behind walls of cruelty and suspicion. A conviction that if someone else receives kindness, respect, or dignity, it must come at my expense.
It’s a lie, but it’s a seductive one.
When people believe compassion is a zero-sum game, cruelty becomes a kind of twisted self-preservation. Racism, outrage, and performative indifference all spring from the same poisoned root: fear, not just fear of “the other,” but fear that we ourselves are unworthy of love, and that acknowledging someone else’s humanity might somehow drain the little we think we have.
But blessings aren’t slices of pie to be fought over. They’re more like a flame: one candle lights another without losing anything of its own. Grace, dignity, and opportunity multiply in the giving.
History has shown us this again and again. Hoarding grace shrinks both the giver and the receiver. Sharing it expands us all. It leads to safer neighborhoods, freer laughter, and the kind of civic trust that makes democracy work. It makes parks feel like playgrounds again, not battlegrounds.
That toddler, screamed at by a stranger in a public space, will grow up. And one day, they will learn something about this country. They will absorb either the message that hate is normal, or that love is inexhaustible. The choice belongs not to the woman who shouted, but to the rest of us. We decide what lesson sticks.
We must call out racism. We must reject the politics of fear. But more than that, we must model the alternative: an economy of abundance, where empathy compounds like interest, and the dividends are paid in stronger communities, richer connections, and futures shaped not by grievance, but by grace.
If we cling to our blessings with clenched fists, we may find them rotting there. But if we pass them on, we just might discover how boundless they really are.
Dave Kooi
Kewanee, Ill.
