Some days I wonder if this nation can be saved.
I know what I’m supposed to believe.
I’m supposed to believe that America is still in its infancy, that it is a beautiful but complicated idea, that we simply haven’t become what we can and will become.
I’m supposed to remember that history is cyclical, that all barbaric regimes are temporary, and that every evil empire invariably falls.
I’m supposed to hold fast to the dream that we will emerge from this scalding present crucible, transformed and made better by the conflict.
I know that I’m supposed to believe that we have still not seen our best days yet, and that when we eventually do, it will be worth all the struggle we’ve endured to claim the nation our forebears dreamed of.
In the past, I’ve often believed that. I’ve written it. I’ve preached it.
Now, I’m not so sure.
250 years into our collective lifespan, we are as afflicted with systemic racism as we’ve ever been, white nationalism has completely infected the entirety of one of our political parties, and we are teetering perilously close to extremist minority rule that will in effect, permanently silence the voices and votes of the vast majority.
With every bit of the planet’s accumulated information now literally in the palms of our hands, too many of our people are still believing easily disprovable falsehoods, still falling victim to nonsensical conspiracies, still vulnerable to baseless lies about their neighbors.
Even with the benefits of hindsight of our shameful and bloody history, a toxic cocktail of overt racism, neanderthal theology, intellectual ignorance, and self-preservation has rendered a large swath of America hostile to Science, terrified of diversity, and irrationally violent toward vulnerable people.
And perhaps worst of all, a substantial portion of this nation remains emotionally tethered to one of the single most reprehensible human beings on the planet, despite a decade of prolific lawlessness and unrepentant moral filth. His ineptitude, immorality, predation, and criminality have not proven to be dealbreakers but selling points.
How are decent, reasonable people supposed to work with this?
How do we find common ground with those who insist on dehumanization of those who are different?
How can we engage in constructive conversation or honest dialogue with people whose reality is so arbitrary, whose truth is so malleable, whose moral goalposts are forever shifting?
How can we forge a new and more equitable America, while so many Americans live perpetually backwards, pining for a bygone day when fewer people had a voice or a vote?
How can we coexist with those who would rewind this nation to a time when women, people of color, and LGBTQ human beings had their value determined, their options dictated, and their futures defined by straight, white men?
If our families and friendships and workplaces and churches and political systems are all still this saturated with supremacy, can an interdependent community of disparate humanity with equitable access to life, liberty, and happiness ever be a reality here?
Romanticism and misplaced optimism aside, is America as we envision it still possible, with MAGA’s poison having infected its bloodstream?
It may of course still be possible, yet with every year I think it becomes less and less probable. The longer we live as a nation with these untreated collective cancers of heart and mind, the greater opportunity they have to metastasize exponentially and the less chance we have of eradicating them for good.
History reminds us that the more we abide brutality and tolerate discrimination, the more normal they become, the more difficult they are to excise. Our present normalis not sustainable if we’re ever going to grow into something truly beautiful.
I want this nation to become what the songs and the anthems declare we can be, but I’m not sure we all share that desire. I think many of us want the ugliest atrocities of our past to be our future, and that may be a disease too invasive to be healed of for the rest of us.
There’s an old saying: when the horse is dead, dismount.
The ride may be over for America.
Maybe this horse is beyond saving.
Yes, I’ll show up again today, leveraging my time, my resources, and my voice in the cause of equality and empathy; to do all I can let freedom ring and let justice roll down like a river, though I admit, it feels like a fool’s errand.
Still, I want to know I left this life doing everything I could to help us get well, and that’s what will propel me back out into the fray once again.
I’m waking up in this America that is, and will be fighting like hell to craft the America that could be, as futile as that sometimes seems.
For ten interminable, exhausting years, MAGA has been an invasive, insidious national cancer.
I wonder if we can survive it.
What about you? How do you view the damage of the last decade? Do you see our demise as a foregone conclusion, or do you feel hopeful that transformation can and will come? Let me know in the comments.
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