A New Civil War
Let’s not focus on debating whether we are good or bad country as tomorrow is aother day. We can agree the USA is unique. We can agree our uniqueness creates the ability to be exceptional. We are still a very young country. An experiment. We are a crucible in which people from different cultures and economic classes are struggling to create one nation that is prosperous and beneficial for all. Do not give up hope that the struggle will be successful. Since Reagan was President our country has stagnated in the goal of creating true economic equal opportunity for all and equality under the law for all. Now, under trump, all the divisions have been exacerbated. But I will not lose faith in the promise of the USA. I have lived and worked amongst immigrants my entire adult life. I have visited and studied foreign countries. We have so much potential for the exceptionalism we claim!
But the existence of the evilness in men who would exploit their fellow Americans, by giving them loans they can’t afford to pay back and then taking their homes, by bringing the weight of the justice system down on poor Americans of African ancestry to feed the justice system’s lifeblood, is a monster that must be destroyed. We fought one Civil War. It did not defeat this enemy. Its possible we can defeat them without another war but only time will tell. But do not give up because of what we were. Do not give up because we nearly wiped out the natives. Do not give up because we enslaved Africans, then after slavery ended we brought our kids to watch lynchings. We owe the descendants of these people, the natives, the Africans. We owe each one of them, as an indivdual American, true equal opportunity, true equality under the law.
I will be so bold as to say Jefferson did not get it quite right. Equality works for math. 2 plus equal 4. Its too much of a stretch to use this specific formula in comparing humans. The idea that all men are created equal is too abstract. It’s not concrete, black and white, easy to understand with common sense like a math equation.
Can we come to understand that 250 years after Jefferson wrote these words it means for us today that all men and women in our country should be born with equal opportunity, that all men and women will be treated equal under the law and in business? If yes, we can get back on track toward achieving this goal. If yes we can find leaders who can take us there.
If yes, it may lead to a new Civil War. The super wealthy and global elites, which includes the foreign gangsters who own trump, the white supremists who run the justice industry, will flat out resist the idea of providing TRUE equal opportunity for all Americans. That would create integration, education, healthcare, housing at the super wealthy’s expense.
Our ancestors sacrificed their lives at Gettsburg, at Normandy, in the Pacific for a vague notion of freedom. Was it the freedom for rich white people to retain the power to exploit poor people and Americans of African ancestry in their own country? Hard to say! The North fought the south simply to keep us together as a nation. But racism won the day as time went by after the shooting stopped. And the German POWs in the south of the USA during WWII had no trouble eating at lunch counters after their release.
So let’s be clear. We have another war to fight against the economic forces that BOTH repress non white Americans and against the economic interests that have shifted the wealth of Americans into the tiny group that has the power to wipe out the middle class and exploit our superficial cultural divisions.
So let’s not talk about whether the USA was good or bad. Let’s just stand up now and throw out the criminals who have tried to turn back the clock on the usa, that have tried to turn the usa into a banana relublic. We can do it with words and at the ballot box. We can do it with non violence. But wounded animals will fight back and if we MUST defend ourselves with arms we must put up a fight and bring it to them!
Did your ancestors sacrifice, suffer for the cause of freedom? Now is the time to channel their sprit and make the USA truly a land of the free and home of the brave. Let’ s make it a country that is better than it ever had been for ALL of its citizens.
