We Are The Republic

Lincoln Memorial from the WWII Memorial, Washington DC, April 2022 _{(Credit: Author)}

In lieu of a formal article this week, here some thoughts on America after a very tough few weeks.

The Godfather opened with one of the best lines in all of cinema, “I believe in America.” Today, it seems as though not enough people are echoing that sentiment. To them, America is either a failed state with no hope of improving, or a once great nation infested with undesirable people and immoral ideas.

Personally, I don’t think either of these bear a resemblance to the truth.

America is being tested. It seems every election is more contentious than the previous one, and this year’s is no exception. And it goes without saying that it is exceedingly important to pay attention and be engaged, and to vote. Our voices are only heard if we speak, together, towards a common goal.

Watching Van Jones come to tears on CNN in reaction to Joe Biden’s victory in 2020 was such a perfect summary of how much that victory means to so many people. People who have it much worse than I do. People whose very existence was treated with contempt and hatred by those who waged war on the bedrock of American democracy. That was a moment that renewed my hope, as I saw it at the first of what must be many ways to tell those people that they do have a place here; that they belong to this country, wholly and completely, as much as anyone else.

The ideals of America are still alive, but I think they have to be reaffirmed this year. We have a great struggle ahead to meet those ideals, because it’s something we’ve never done before. And we’re doing it while a significant number of people are wrapping themselves in the American flag, and saying they love this country more than anyone while they work to destroy it from within. Traitors pretending to be patriots. They should not, and cannot, be allowed to convince the rest of us that they alone are the representatives of the ‘true’ America. The true America is a nation of the hopeful, who are atoning for past sins by building a society truly equal for all, and doing so by coming together and embracing the idea that everyone who wishes to be an American is one. America welcomes diverse people, ideas, beliefs, and cultures. The idea of the nation is to be where the best of the world comes to grow and push forward.

We’re missing figures like Walter Cronkite and Peter Jennings on our televisions; the all-star journalists on the air every night, covering the most calamitous events with a calming and authoritative presence, telling us what we need to know to be as well-informed as befitting of this great nation. The level of dedication to such a noble calling, and the consummate professionalism these titans in the newsroom demonstrated is sorely lacking in today’s journalism. The last several years would have played out very differently. I’d argue that the fourth estate has abdicated its responsibility towards truth and the American people in favor of chasing ratings and advertising revenue, and it has left the nation worse off because of it.

Now, it comes down to us. We need to be more discerning and think critically, not trust the facts we want to see, but trust the facts that are true. Any fool with a microphone can speak authoritatively on subjects for which they have absolutely zero expertise. We shouldn’t trust them. What do the experts tell us? What do science and logic and reason tell us? The inconvenience of truth is not an acceptable reason to rewrite reality, and we have seen that too much in the last several years. We must face the hard facts and harder truths, and be willing to carry ourselves onwards with dignity

Project 2025 represents a clear and present danger to American society and threatens to light this nation’s ideals on fire. It infringes upon the rights of the individuals enshrined in our founding documents, and spits in the face of the fair and free society we are attempting to build. This isn’t conservatism, this is madness. It’s a rejection of reason and progress for the sake of a few petty would-be tyrants upset they don’t get to play tinpot dictators and trying to shatter the backbone of the nation in order to fulfill their own twisted agendas. The threat they represent to our democracy, however, is very real.

I’m choosing to keep the faith in the good that is in this country. There are people who live here, either by birth or by choice, who believe in everything we say makes America the greatest country in the world. We owe it to those people, to the dreamers, to give the struggle for the future of the nation our full attention. We owe it to the generations of Americans who sacrificed in hopes of building a better tomorrow. It would be a dishonor to their sacrifice if we were to let all the hard work of the American experiment be for nothing. Yet, I think that if we give this our all, if every single one of us learns how to work towards what is best for everyone in this country, then we can build the America spoken of in poem and song, the shining city on the hill. We can fulfill the promise inscribed on the base of the Statue of Liberty, and shine the golden lamp beside the golden door, propped wide open for those who dream to be free.

And I don’t think that this is an issue of conservative or liberal, or what state you’re from, or who you choose to pray to. It’s an issue of whether or not you believe in the institutions of this nation. If you can accept that it is possible to love the United States of America while constantly pushing it to be better. Patriotism isn’t believing that your country is wholly perfect, that it cannot be improved, and anyone who says otherwise is an enemy. Patriotism is fighting tooth and nail for the country you love to be the best it can purely because you love it. Patriotism is not only recognizing the nation’s shortcomings, but spurring the nation to fix them and achieve its potential out of love of what the nation can be.

Frankly, everyone should be on board with making us an example of peace and prosperity for the world. Everyone should want us to have schools that look like palaces with the best-paid and most qualified teachers across the country. Everyone should want infrastructure that looks like it’s from a hundred years from now, and industry that would make those a hundred years ago pass out in shock. Everyone should want every voice in this nation to be heard, to be able to solve grievances with listening and understanding. Everyone should want to be one nation, indivisible, that is focused on compromise, cooperation, unity, and compassion rather than spite, and division and hatred.

In late 2019, I found something on YouTube. Someone had, twenty years prior, taped the entirety of ABC’s coverage of the Millennium celebrations, and uploaded all twenty four hours of it. I decided to start watching it as a way to celebrate the start of a new decade and catch a glimpse into a time of my life I which had never really experienced before due to being too young.

I didn’t quite manage to finish watching all of it at that time, so it became something I would pick up and watch a segment or two at a time throughout the year. It was something different, something I could put on in the background and not have to worry about watching too closely, but it was interesting to watch and out of the ordinary.

My idiosyncratic time travel to the tail end of 1999 made me recall some very vague memories of watching it live, but it brought me back to a time, in my head, when it was okay to focus on the good and how far we had come as a world, and as a nation. We looked ahead with hope, and recognized how fast our lives could move.

It made me think of the fact that somebody could have been born in the German Empire, grow up in the Weimar Republic, begin their adult lives in Nazi Germany, raise their kids in the Federal Republic of Germany or German Democratic Republic, and die in a reunited Germany. Five different forms of governments in technically five different countries, all across one lifetime. And that wasn’t an exceptional case, that was the reality for many lives, in many different areas of the globe. We think of all those events being so long ago, but they weren’t. What we think of as history affects our daily lives in ways we seldom take into consideration.

History moves faster than we anticipate. We slow it down in our heads, we think that things from a “long time ago” really are about as relevant as the Biblical times. They’re not. Life moves fast, time moves fast, society progresses fast. And that’s not a bad thing. I think it’s rather remarkable how in 1900, there were a whole lot of people who were at the short end of the stick, and how when we woke up to the realities that treating anyone different the way we did was wrong, we managed to make such phenomenal strides towards a better society by the time 2000 rolled around.

We’re still not where we need to be, not by a long shot. This isn’t a “Mission Accomplished” moment by any means, but I think it’s a lot easier to push towards the light at the end of the tunnel when you focus on the light ahead, rather than the darkness behind. And I think that it’s harder when we lose perspective too.

Watching twenty four hours of New Year’s Eve coverage, with people all over the world, made me remember how similar we all are. How you can find any particular struggle in any part of the world. But you can also find any particular reason to celebrate in any part of the world. We’re all a lot more similar than we tend to remember. We’re all capable of incredible things in incredibly short spans of time. We’ve lived in incredibly dark times since New Year’s Day 2000, especially after the optimism of the nineties. But if we remember what we’re capable of together, I think we can make the dream of the best world we can make into a reality. Building that dream starts right here at home.

If anything I said here today resonates, let it be this. Pay attention to the debates and struggles of the nation. Look for the facts beyond the fear. Seek the honest truth, and stand with conviction in your beliefs, not because someone else told you to follow their words, but because you decided for yourself what you believe in. Then, in November, step into the voting booth and choose who you think will best fulfill the promise of America. This is our nation, and it is up to us to build the best one possible for all Americans.

We have such a very long way to go ahead of us, but this is a great nation, a nation for, by, and of its people. And nobody should be able to take that away from us. We have a long way to go, but together, we can get there. This is a great nation, but it is only as great as the people who take part in the work of building it. As President Josiah Bartlet said, “Decisions are made by those who show up.”