Pretend This is a Country You Would Want to Live In
Now ask yourself why you have to pretend.
Before I start on what you’ll surely see as a gushing, naïve paean to America, let me say up front that I know how awful we’ve been. I know the terrible things we’ve done — or rather what they’ve done — from the years before that lofty group of privileged white men stewed over the wording in our constitution, wondering how they could keep power and still make a stab at suggesting equality, to right now, a few months after Trump’s insurrectionists raced up the Capitol steps to attack the same government we’ve depended on for more than two centuries — those same steps where Joe Biden stood and swore to become the kind of president 45 presidents before him have never quite managed to pull off.
We’ve been at this long enough to watch the taking of that pledge with a healthy dose of skepticism. In fact, skepticism is the order of the day now. We’re not allowed to praise our United States without also acknowledging that as a country we’ve been pretty shitty and maybe aren’t worth saving.
I don’t need to recount every abuse perpetrated by a government sworn to protect each and every one of us. For every two steps forward we’ve taken at least one step back. And that one step back has caused irreparable harm to millions of Americans.
