There are at least two Americas.
There's my America and your America--I'm making an assumption here, I
admit it--which is the America of the Deist founders, the America of
Lincoln's second inaugural, the America of Thoreau and Whitman, of FDR
and MLKjr, of the part of the Pledge that I'm proud to say: one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Some posters on TT have derisively asked me what I'm for, and I find it easy to say: truth, justice, and the American way.
Then there's the other America (oh, I know I'm oversimplifying).
It's the America of the United Fruit Company, the America of slavery
and Indian genocide, the America of Custer and Curtis LeMay, the
America of the Bush family and Father Coughlin and Rush Limbaugh, of
Cheney and Haliburton.
Which America
was attacked on 9/11? Which America was the target of bin Laden? Which
America invaded Iraq, put hoods over men's heads, tortured and raped
and murdered in the freshly-painted torture rooms that once belonged to
Saddam?
The problem, of course, is that we cannot separate ourselves so easily,
one America from the other, in reality as we can in rhetoric. Indeed,
in many Americans both Americas exist at once: Jefferson owned slaves
and used them sexually; Lincoln was willing to suspend habeas corpus;
FDR may have manipulated events in regard to Pearl Harbor. And in the mind of the world's citizens, the confusion must be tremendous.
We are now engaged in a great civil war,
though not one shot has been fired by either side, to see whether this
nation, or any nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the
proposition that all men--not just Americans--are created equal and are
endowed with dignity and are worthy of justice, can survive its darker
self.
I believe that this is the last time in my generation in which a choice can be made for the soul of America. As apocalyptic as it sounds, I believe that events in the next few years will set this country on a course: either
to fulfill what I believe to be its destiny, to stand for and fight for
truth, justice, and the American way, or to become the New Rome, the empire that will justify its wars, torture, oppression, and murder in the name of safety, security, and standard of living.
Daily I consider the possibility that it may already be too late, for us and the world. If I believed in a Divine who could hear us and answer our prayers, I would be on my knees imploring it every day that the choice was still before us, not behind us.
