What Of America Do You Hold Dear?

A Saturday Prompt

Lady Liberty overlooking New York Harbor. (Photo by Alexander Spatari via Getty Images)

I often think back to Donald Trump’s Fox interview with Bill O’Reilly that aired before the 2017 Super Bowl. “Putin’s a killer,” O’Reilly told Trump, which spurred this response: “There are a lot of killers. We’ve got a lot of killers. What do you think? Our country’s so innocent?”

It was stunning to hear an American president suggest that America’s actions are equivalent with Russia’s. But Trump’s retort also underscored the cynical prism through which he viewed our country—raising doubt about whose interests this malignant man would defend and what carnage he would be willing to unleash. Was he just un-American or, in fact, anti-American?

The last months have seen desecration piled on top of desecration—of ideas, ideals, institutions and rights that have defined our nation. The targets of his escalating attacks were knowable from his first term and his campaign last year, including against undocumented immigrants, the justice system, Democrats, democracy, liberal government and the Constitution itself. His repeated demonization of vulnerable non-white populations in our country has been particularly abhorrent, as it continues to spur hatred and bigotry on a mass scale.

For anyone who still wondered what could be his bottom, what line he would not cross, the reckless demolition of the East Wing of our White House was another ugly reminder that there is no bottom, no desecration that he would not pursue. As sickening as his actions are, they’re made worse by his lies prior to the destruction that he would not touch the existing building because “It’s my favorite place. I love it.” Once again, we have been assaulted by his pathological lying, total lack of principle and utter lovelessness.

Since the beginning, Trump’s despicable actions have thrown into stark relief all the things we love and will defend, the things that make America, well, America. The No Kings protests offered a bevy of insights, as protestors carried signs defending the Constitution, immigrants, free speech and the right of dissent, democracy, freedom, justice and equality. They voiced support for the power of self-governance embodied in the notion of “We, the people,” and the commitment to not be ruled by an unjust monarch.

As so much has been dismantled, we are reminded that our social compact as a nation and people is based on the power of ideas and beliefs to bind us. If these ideas lose their power, then it’s not hard to see how our nation unravels.

It’s why our greatest president Abraham Lincoln traveled to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania in 1863 after the bloody battle there to affirm not only that “our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” Lincoln also questioned whether “any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure.” It’s why he asserted the democratic idea of government “of the people, by the people and for the people” and resolved that it’s our work as Americans to prove that the dead “did not die in vain” and such a nation “shall not perish from the earth.”

I have long taken pride in the American promise to make space for new immigrants, an idea about freedom and opportunity embodied in the poem of Emma Lazarus etched into the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty: “Give me your tired, your poor/Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” I value this welcoming principle even as America has often failed in delivering on this pledge and our founding involved the near-total ravaging of the land’s Indigenous populations.

I also take pride in many of America’s great cities and small towns that combine to define a people and its purpose. I hold dear the natural beauty found across the continent. And I still hope there is the possibility of coming together as one nation—however hard that is to imagine when the country is increasingly fractured by a regime hungry to feast on the spoils of division.

That trajectory, dear readers, if we are not to perish from the earth, is ours to make happen.

So: What of America do you hold dear? What do you treasure enough that you are willing to defend it despite or because of the onslaught of attacks? Put differently, what still inspires you and reminds you what we are fighting for? Perhaps you want to focus on ideas and ideals and documents that embody this nation’s rights and principles. Or maybe you want to focus on people or the places that move you.

As always, I look forward to reading your observations and the opportunity for this community to learn from each other. Please do be respectful in your remarks. Trolling will not be tolerated.

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