“Never was there, perhaps, more hollowness at heart than at present, and here in the United States.” Although Walt Whitman wrote those words almost 150 years ago, they are resonant tonight as I sit watching early election returns making it clear that the election is likely to be closer than I hoped. As I watch the results thus far, I am wondering about what kind of country we have become.

Whitman, who is pictured in today’s #stampoftheday, a 5-cent stamp issued in 1940, wrestled with similar issues in “Democratic Vistas,” an essay written in 1871. “Genuine belief seems to have left us,” he wrote, adding, “the spectacle is appalling. We live in an atmosphere of hypocrisy throughout….From deceit in the spirit, the mother of all false deeds, the offspring is already incalculable….The depravity of the business classes of our country is not less than has been supposed, but infinitely greater….The magician’s serpent in the fable ate up all the other serpents; and money-making is our magician’s serpent, remaining to-day sole master of the field.”

But the essay, which David Brooks in 2003 called our nation’s most brilliant political sermon, is much more than a screed because, as Brooks explained, “it embodies the exuberant energy of American society-the energy that can make other peoples so nervous-and it captures in its hodgepodge nature both the high aspirations and the sordid realities of everyday life.”

Brooks correctly notes that the essay “can be an infuriating piece of writing” he contends that, “no one since Whitman has captured quite so well the motivating hopefulness that propels American policy and makes the nation a great and restless force in the world. No other essay communicates quite so well what it is like to live constantly in the shadow of the future, trusting that tomorrow’s world will be better and will redeem the incompleteness of the present….Despite its many imperfections, America is a force for democracy and progress.”

So what does Whitman say that gave Brooks hope and, therefore might give me hope in what thus far is a disquieting evening. “Shams, etc., will always be the show, like ocean’s scum,” Whitman wrote. Even so, the American people were “the peaceablest and most good natured race in the world, and the most personally independent and intelligent.” Moreover, Americans were reliable in emergencies and possessed “a certain breadth of historic grandeur.” The behavior of the average American during the Civil War, for example, proved beyond all doubt “that popular democracy, whatever its faults and dangers, practically justifies itself beyond the proudest claims and wildest hopes of its enthusiasts.”

In all this Brooks argues, “Whitman was teaching an important lesson here: It is misleading to think one can arrive at a single, consistent judgment about the United States (or perhaps about any society). When it comes to the health of the country and its culture, the highest highs and the lowest lows are simultaneous and adjacent.”

I hoped that tonight would be a dramatic and quick repudiation of the last four years (and beyond). Instead, tonight underscores that we continue to be badly divided. And, I’ve been powerfully moved by the outpouring of support and positive energy during this campaign. Hopefully, our better angels ultimately will prevail. But it’s not going to be simple or easy.

Be well, stay safe, fight for justice and work for peace.