Dear World, (An Apology From Decent Americans)
Dear World,
We felt we needed to say something while saying something is still allowed.
We know many of you have lived under malevolent, unhinged dictators before, but this is new for us. For its history, our nation has been led by men who, despite their varying flaws and deficiencies, some of which were quite disturbing—were by and large, normal human beings. Whatever darkness in them, they had at the very least a baseline of humanity and decency that more often than not insured rational behavior.
This man is not normal.
Over recent months, we've watched long-erected pillars of our Republic bulldozed by him and his complicit cadre of ghouls and sycophants. We've seen the very hallmarks of who we are as a nation tossed in the garbage:
the celebration of diverse coexistence,
the open welcome to the oppressed,
the promise of inalienable rights for every person,
the guarantee of free and fair elections,
the same access to health and opportunity and safety afforded to everyone,
the freedom to speak without censor or restraint.
At this moment these are all in great jeopardy.
Things we took for granted in our leadership: things like goodness, wisdom, and basic truthfulness are no longer in play, and as things are eroding quickly here we wanted to let you know that we're sorry.
We're sorry that our apathy and laziness have yielded such a reckless, impulsive, small man to steward this nation.
We're sorry for the jagged, bitter ugliness that is characterizing us in these moments.
We're sorry to those suffering greatly, who have braved such peril to seek refuge here and who will be turned away and disregarded.
We're sorry to our Mexican neighbors who've been fashioned into convenient villains to justify erecting a grandiose, wasteful display of false protection that we do not want.
We're sorry to Muslims everywhere who've been used as pawns to generate irrational fear among those already susceptible to bigotry and discrimination.
We're sorry to the leaders of the world, who instead of being met by level-headed, measured, intelligent dialogue, are now greeted with the incoherent social media rantings of a perpetually-furious man-child.
We're sorry to those who now experience the Christian faith as a racist, Nationalistic bully pulpit wielded with malice toward the very diverse humanity Jesus lived and died for.
We're sorry to people everywhere whose lives are now more tenuous, more violent, less safe, less secure than they had been before.
We want you to know that this is not who we are. It may be who this man is. It may be who those sharing power with him are. It may even be the tens of millions who voted for him.
But this is not the totality of this nation. It is not the steady, strong beacon of freedom that it was intended to be. It is not the America our people have fought and died for. It is not the one first formed in the crucible of oppression and cast into the words of our ever-disregarded Constitution.
This is not the America of the tens of millions who did not vote for him and who reject him.
Our America affirms the inherent, priceless beauty of every human being.
Our America declares that no person is ascribed less value because of their pigmentation, religion, gender, financial means, sexual orientation, nation of origin, or any other variable.
Our America is home for those seeking hope and joy and rest.
And we are going to fight for this America. Through political channels and through grassroots activism, through the use of our Press and of our personal voices, we're going to expose this man's incompetence, call out his heart sickness, and condemn every violent, reckless, vicious act when it does not reflect our hearts and our will. Please do your best to disregard anything that comes from his mouth or from those loudly and continually parroting his propaganda. They have proven themselves mortally allergic to the truth.
And we hope that in whatever way you can, that you will stand with us. We know that we have made this mess ourselves. We understand that you have your own problems to contend with, some far more urgent and pressing than this, but we believe that we are a single community; that we are all tethered together in our humanity, that we are in real-time crafting the life our children and their children will inherit.
Dear World, we're sorry and we hope you'll endure these days with us.
With despair and hope in equal measure, in peace and unity with you.
Sincerely,
Decent Americans
John, Know that many outside the USA will embrace your hopes. We pray for you and other likeminded. May you endure. Philip (in Australia).
John, these are lovely sentiments, but the USA has been a problem child in the world for a very long time. The (neo)imperialist, neofascist, and christofascist tendencies that are embedded in the notion of Manifest Destiny, which has driven American foreign policy and policies of expansion since the early 1800s (yes: over 200 years), and which was supposedly inspired by the process of expansion of the Roman Empire (a malign institution, as most historians of the ancient world know) has to be weighed along with all the lovely ideals embedded in the Constitution and its amendment system, in FDR's Four Freedoms, and in other statements by the occasional (and I mean occasional) political leader who didn't try to export a toxic notion of American Exceptionalism to the rest of the world. Way back in 2004, when Bush II was re-elected, a chain email letter went around my particular international community of scholars with the simple statement "We are so sorry, world, that this dipsh*t excuse for a human was re-elected." And when I sent it to a large number of people I know all over the world, I got replies: "We know you are. We know you're not the problem." Twenty years later, we who are reasonable people have had to do this TWICE MORE. This is not about just one deranged, demented, medication-addled person who is about to become Felon in Chief. It is an American problem.