Back to blog

Nosotros
This was never a perfect country, not Xanadu, not Utopia, not even Denmark. It was instead a promise, a work in progress, an ideal, a community, It was, as Abraham Lincoln, a man who might legitimately have been a good deal more cynical and pessimistic about it said, ‘the last best hope’ for humans to govern themselves in a way that made life better for most of us most of the time. A compromise.
We had that idea, as did many others, that Government should make life better for the people who lived under it. Moreso, we had the idea, as few others believed possible, that the governed, the people, could create and maintain a government for those ends – to make life better. A betting man in 1786 would have thought twice about betting on us, a fledgling nation already rife with terrible problems like slavery to solve with its measly 13 colonies.
Improbably, we not only survived, we flourished. We made freedom a real thing instead of a theoretical project. We made the rule of law the same for everyone. We made private property possible for ordinary people. Did rich white men skew the system? Of course, the rich always find a way. But there was some justice, sometimes even for them. Their kids got everything handed to them but some of the poor kids, also, were able to rise up. We sold our kids that story and because it was possible, we all decided to believe in it and believing in it made us great.
What we have now is a different kind of promise, a different, ideal, a different project – one that speculates that a few ‘strong’ men of nominally Christian orientation and definitely white skin can lead by protecting the wealthy few who support them. That people don’t need individual power, or shared power, they need to obey. As one addle-pated actor said: “Daddy’s home, and he’s taking his belt off”.
Mr. Trump promised retribution against his enemies. That may be the only promise he has ever kept to the American People.
Instead of taking care of the neediest among us, he has punished them for their neediness. If they wanted to be real Americans they wouldn’t have disabilities, or lifelong health needs or dark skin or vulvas or sexual identities that don’t match those of their potential rapists. They wouldn’t need to see a doctor or mail a letter or keep their job or buy a home

.
This is no experiment. This is history, and it is the most shameful history of all.
Totalitarianism, at least thus far in human history, has proven to do a shitty job of advancing humanity. Sure, you might get a pyramid out of it but a pyramid, although it is art, shares a timeline with everything else on this dusty planet – ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Only it does it even faster than is natural for those who are not ruling the others.
People don’t live on pyramids, they don’t live on Space X or Russian superyachts. They live on faith, on hope, on work, on community. They live by helping one another and being helped in turn in an endless chain of belonging and care. Of, put simply, love.
There is little to love in this new world, this emerging country led by selfish and stupid oligarchs.
I have not yet seen or heard of a single move made by the United States President and his ‘willing executioners” in these long few weeks that has as its aim, stated or covert, to improve the lives of the governed, us toads, us ‘parasites’ (Mr. Musk), us undeserving. Undeserving poor. Undeserving minorities. Undeserving Americans, which is, it appears, all of us who are not Wealthy White Male Christian nationalists.
Nosotros, the Spanish-speaking immigrants say. Us. Not me and my buddies, us. All of us. All those tired, poor teeming masses yearning to breathe free. I know it wasn’t perfect, but it was still monumental, a stand against time and greed, a stick stuck into the mud of our worst impulses saying, “No, that shall not pass here, because here, we stick up for each other, here we are part of us, part of that last best hope.”
I already miss that America tremendously, and my heart breaks for us all.