Editorial: The eclipse effect: America looked up together

For much of Monday, the United States was looking up – literally. A total eclipse of the sun was visible across a wide swath of the United States. In New Jersey, about 75 percent of the sun was blocked by the moon. With the aid of special glasses, spectators could safely view the partial eclipse. Lenses matter.

Without special glasses, individuals could risk blindness. The solar eclipse, while real, was also a metaphor.

Given all that has happened in the nation since Aug.11, when neo-Nazis marched with torches through Charlottesville, Virginia, we cannot help wonder whether we would be a less divided people if we could go to a nearby 7-Eleven and pick up a pair of glasses that filter out that which is harmful, leaving only the awe-inspiring for us to ponder.

With all the challenges facing the country – internally and abroad – the eclipse frenzy is a reminder we still are capable of putting aside all that is man-made to marvel at something beyond our grasp.

Eclipse:North Jersey looks toward the sky as the moon partially eclipses the sun

It has been nearly 40 years since the last major North American total solar eclipse, on Feb. 26, 1979. The late Seventies were not a unifying time, either. Long lines of cars at gas stations. The Middle East was a tinder keg. The Iran hostage crisis would begin later that year.

And the world was at war in June of 1918, the last time the entire United States experienced a solar eclipse. Perhaps people then marveled at the power above as we do today, while recognizing that the moment of awe was fleeting.

Yet it is not that long ago that the nation did look up to the stars and the moon and hunger for exploration. While there is still talk of returning to the moon and traveling to other planets, there is no national mandate to do so. It was Cold War politics that put the United States into a race with the Soviet Union to get to the moon first. But it also was more than that. It was a still a time for explorers.

We are not living in an age of explorers anymore. Increasingly, Americans are looking backward toward a nation that never was in reality what it has become in lore. And our national leaders have become too consumed with the art of politics to see the wonder of the universe above them.

On Sept. 12, 1962, President John Kennedy gave a speech at Rice University in Houston, Texas:

“We choose to go to the moon,” Kennedy said. “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.”

President Donald Trump’s active Twitter account was silent Monday afternoon during the eclipse, perhaps because he was preparing for a Monday evening address to the nation. Yet a few words of wonder would have been welcomed. Because if the nation could look up as one to see the majesty of the sun temporarily blocked, it could look forward as one to the majesty of America revealed.

The next total solar eclipse in North America is not until 2024. We should not have to wait that long.