America’s Warning: Purple Toes

My little toe turned from a rosy pink to a deep purple last October.  I paid little attention to it until it became painful.  When I finally had the doctor take a look at my little purple toe he immediately said, “Ischemia,” and sent me off immediately for vascular tests of all sorts—from head to toe.  Somehow and for some reason the blood flow to my little toe had gotten stopped up—it wasn’t getting enough oxygenated blood.  This “stopping up” can happen in your brain, legs, and just about everywhere else in between.  Fortunately for me it was my little toe which shouted out a stern warning.

Hardening of the arteries (arteriosclerosis) is a progressive condition that begins in childhood and becomes more evident as one ages.  Cholesterol deposits in our arteries create plaque buildup. This is dangerous because fragments of plaque can break off and form a clot that blocks your artery and stops blood flow to your heart, brain, legs, or even your little toe.  Age isn’t the only thing that can affect your arteries.  Lifestyle matters—extra weight, lack of exercise, and eating the wrong food (high in trans fat) can all take a toll.  

In a figurative sense, it seems to me that we in America are experiencing a hardening of the arteries—to our brains, and especially to our hearts.  Has our capacity to “think” been stopped up?  Have our hearts grown cold and hard from a stoppage in our capacity to care?  Has the “fat” of our bigotry, prejudice, narrow-mindedness, intolerance, selfishness, ignorance and injustice through the years turned into deposits of plaque, pieces of which are now breaking off and blocking both our capacity to think and our capacity to care?

There are all kinds of “purple toes”—warning signs—showing up, every day, indicating a hardening of those arteries (equal rights, the rule of law, innocent until proven guilty, civil rights, immigrants, unalienable rights) that have carried the American Dream down through the years.      These “purple toes,” this ischemia, cannot be ignored and must be treated.  To ignore the warning signs will lead to a hardening of both mind and heart—and eventually will become the stroke of death to the soul of America.