As I scanned through the in-flight movie options on a recent cross-country flight, I excitedly stopped on the film Sinners. It had been on my “to watch”’ list for a long time, and now I finally had two hours of uninterrupted time to watch it. I was nailed to my seat for the next 137 minutes. Part Jim Crow tragedy, part vampire horror film, and part love letter to Black art, I couldn’t take my eyes off it.

Many smarter people than I have already written terrific reviews and analyses of the film. (See Michael Kugler’s review, Sinners: Vampires, Blood & the Conquest of Death in the Reformed Journal, June 25, 2025)

For my part, I can’t stop thinking about one line delivered about halfway through the film. The bad guys (i.e. the vampires) have made themselves known and the good guys are surrounded. And Annie, the character most connected to the ancient spiritual practices of her people, utters this diagnosis of their adversaries, “The soul gets stuck in the body. Can’t rejoin their ancestors. Cursed to live here with all this hate.”

This would have felt poignant enough in the aftermath of the Charlie Kirk assassination weeks ago. But mere hours after hearing these lines delivered I was reading with fresh horror about yet another gunman in Grand Blanc, Michigan bringing his hate to yet another church and opening fire on yet more victims of senseless gun violence. And right on cue came the well-choreographed public dismay, along with one of the most well-rehearsed lines in our grotesque public liturgy: “This is not who we are.”

This response comes from a good place. A desire to appeal to our better angels and remind us that we need not live this way forever. But I couldn’t take it this time. Because the truth is that this sentiment is wrong. This is exactly who we are.

It doesn’t matter how far you want to go back, political violence is as American as apple pie. Our country was born out of violent revolution, systematic displacement, and extermination. The entire economic foundation of our country for almost a century was predicated upon a system of wholesale oppression and terror. Once this system was abolished, its violence found ways to morph and persist in the form of Jim Crow subjugation and Klan terrorism.

And running through it all has been a braided cord of individual acts of violence for political ends: Aaron Burr’s famous duel with Alexander Hamilton, the murders of multiple presidents, the deluge of assassinations in the late-1960s, the Oklahoma City bombing, Waco, the steady and intensifying drumbeat of political violence in the post-9/11 era.

This list just came off the top of my head as I freewrote for 45 seconds. If I spent time doing proper research, the list would run on for pages.

Of course, there is also beauty and justice and truth in the story of America. There is promise in our founding documents, and much for which Americans can rightly be proud. But the true story of America is not of an unblemished pearl of great price, but of an alloy of light and dark forged deep in the crucible of history.

I once heard Mark Charles, indigenous author and activist, compare modern America to a kid out on a joyride. The kid has torn up lawns, caused numerous accidents, and hit pedestrians. He is causing terrible damage, and yet he refuses to stop. Somewhere deep in the back of his mind he knows the pain and suffering he is causing. And he also knows that to stop the car will mean to reckon with the damage he has caused. It will mean apologizing and making restitution. It will mean facing the suffering he has caused and actually feeling it. Rather than stop the car, he continues forward–forestalling the painful moment of accountability and causing ever more damage as he goes.

This is who we are. Like the vampires of Sinners, the soul of our nation is trapped. Cursed to live here with all this hate. And until we find the courage to dispense with meaningless public platitudes and stop the car to face it, I fear our souls will never find peace.