But all across the political spectrum is reason to hope for our future as a country. It’s true the politics of divisiveness and bigotry are in control at the highest office of the state at the moment, but the waves of opposition swarming in from across our nation to this are not only a promise of resistance in the short-term; they also signal the values of tomorrow’s United States, where justice and equality are afforded to every one of us without discrimination.
There are still many questions for us to resolve in terms of our differences, the reservations we hold about one another, and the moments when our opinions do more to alienate us from each other than to connect us.
But now more than ever, people everywhere are concerned with an examination of the state’s identity, and this is the greatest question we can ask about our collective existence. What constitutes an American today? Who can and cannot be an American? And are all Americans the same?
In exploring these questions there are the inevitable issues of race, income inequality, the gender revolution, immigration reform and healthcare, foreign policy, and the respective visions we have on these dynamics. And more.
But perhaps most importantly than our differences on the issues is how together we’re seeing that the most basic ingredient for an ideal democracy to become a real one is for us to participate in it. In this respect, we’re at the same place that the architects of the American Civil Liberties Union found themselves in nearly 100 years ago when they wrote that:
“Rights can be maintained only by insisting upon them — by organization, protest, demonstrations, test cases in the courts, and publicity.”
We are more than there now. We are live. And we are just getting started,
J.T.