I love this country.
I don't love it blindly, though.
I don't love it unconditionally.
I don't love it unreservedly.
I love it with my eyes wide open, my mind fully lucid, my senses completely awake.
I see well its every disfigurement and blemish, every grotesque part of its past and every ugly bit of its present.
I see the crucible of colonialism it was formed in, the genocide and white supremacy it has been built upon and sustained by, and the insidious anti-Semitism and perverted Christian theology that has been leveraged to protect it all.
I see the systemic privilege and the toxic nationalism and the embedded misogyny that it is currently afflicted with.
And yet, I love it still.
At least, I love the country it aspires to be; the personal liberties and protections its Constitution declares as its heart, even if those have never been fully accessible to all its people.
I love the promise of a place of willing refuge for tired, poor, huddled masses desiring to breathe deeply from the unfettered freedom it offers, while realizing such air is still rarefied for so many.
I love it because despite its numerous and grievous flaws, it is still one of the greatest collective attempts at equality that humanity has made and it deserves a chance to do better.
And it is because of this fierce and abiding affection for this place and its people that
I grieve: because America, even with its cancerous ills and collective sins—deserves better than Donald Trump.
It deserves better than nonsensical, venomous, all-caps middle of the night social media rants.
It deserves better than unprepared, uninformed, rambling, and incoherent press events.
It deserves better than abject lies and anti-immigrant propaganda and token religion.
It deserves better than his vilification of the Press, his undermining of Intelligence agencies, and his pandering to murderous dictators.
It deserves better than the molotov cocktail of fear and lies and violence he has daily tossed into its citizenry since arriving eight years ago.
It deserves better than an unapologetic kleptocracy formed of career white-collar criminals, known supremacists, and serial grifters.
It deserves better than incendiary rhetoric and gaslighting lies and manufactured crises and phony emergencies.
The millions of men and women who have given years and lives and limbs in defense of this country deserve better.
Service people and police officers and first responders and public school teachers and tireless caregivers deserve better.
Harriet Tubman and Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr and Harvey Milk and John F. Kennedy and Angela Davis deserve better.
The abolitionists and the Suffragettes and the gay activists at Stonewall deserve it.
The Little Rock Nine and the students of Parkland deserve better.
My children and your children, and the children who will inherit the planet
we leave them, all deserve better.
America deserves unvarnished, objective truth.
It deserves creative, imaginative solutions to complex problems.
It deserves a yielding to science and to reason and to wisdom.
It deserves measured, rational discourse on issues of difference.
It deserves a steadfast insistence on the inherent value of all human beings.
It deserves an unflinching look at our ugly history and our current moral cancers.
It deserves leaders whose deepest burden is to decency and country, not to party and profit.
It deserves public servants whose most pressing need is to do the will of its disparate people.
America deserves these things but they are simply not possible if we allow him to finish what he started eight years ago.
He has no interest in unity or diversity or collaboration, or in the best parts of what America aspires to be.
He is an opportunistic amoral bottom feeder; seeking the lowest of ourselves, the worst of our tendencies, the depths of our prejudices—and if he is
allowed to prevail, this is where he will reside until he is no longer president, which he is promising will be at the end of his life.
The America that could be deserves a leader of intelligence, decency, morality, and integrity, and it cannot settle for a man who the entire world (outside of his untethered personality cult) can testify to and that History will record was ill equipped for, morally incapable of, and abhorrent toward
such things.
The nation we seek to become needs to confront its systemic illnesses, its theocratic leanings, and its nationalistic addictions—but it will never do so with a President whose entire platform is composed of such things.
I love this country and I love who we are intended to be but I do not love who we are becoming in these days or who I fear we could become.
We the People, all the people; black, Republican, refugee, gay, Christian, Latino, Atheist, Independent, pagan, bisexual, immigrant, Buddhist, white, Democrat, indigenous, transgender, Hindu, female, Jewish, undocumented, male, Humanist—deserve better.
I hope we choose better.
It is time to hold those who are enabling putin and Russia to be held accountable. It is eye opening when the leader of a foreign nation addresses our Congress and tells them we are abandoning our national role on the world stage. Heather Cox Richardson writes: "When Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida addressed a joint meeting of Congress today, he tried to remind lawmakers of who Americans are. “The U.S. shaped the international order in the postwar world through economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power,” he reminded them. “It championed freedom and democracy. It encouraged the stability and prosperity of nations, including Japan. And, when necessary, it made noble sacrifices to fulfill its commitment to a better world.” He explained the bigger picture. “The United States policy was based on the premise that humanity does not want to live oppressed by an authoritarian state, where you are tracked and surveilled and denied from expressing what is in your heart and on your mind,” he said. “You believed that freedom is the oxygen of humanity.” "
Oh John I think this is your best one yet!! On Monday morning barring anything unforeseen happening over the weekend for the first time in our Country's History, an American President goes on trial for interfering in an Election. Stop and think about that for a minute folks.
Despite all of the ugliness Donald J. Trump has inflicted on every single one of us and our families, the justice system has worked and he WILL go on Trial. Finally. That is a huge victory. And I for one will be celebrating. I pray the jurors will choose to do the right thing and convict him.
Just like I pray the country does the right thing in November and removes this toxic figure from all of our lives forever.
Thank you once again for your beautiful words. You never cease to amaze me. Keep up the great work. We need you. America needs you. ❤️🇺🇸💙