Star-Spangled Salvage: An America Worth Saving
Patriotism cannot be dead. We need it now more than ever.
Don't get me wrong: American exceptionalism is utter horseshit. America is not uniquely good, wise, chosen or elite. On any given day, we are a nation of triumphs and failures. We've established what we are on our worst days.But on our best days? It's Normandy. It's Civil Rights. It's footprints on the fuckin' moon.
What do our best days have in common? Americans standing shoulder to shoulder to make the great happen. Nearly an entire generation coming together in the war effort to end the Nazi stranglehold on Europe, throngs of oppressed people defiantly standing up to demand equality, and our best and brightest chasing down a common goal to achieve what had only before been imagined.
In truth, America isn't completely good or bad. America is what Americans do with it.
In a very short 250 years:
- We wrote a Constitution and Bill of Rights that reshaped modern constitutional democracy.
- Expanded voting rights far beyond original limits — across race, sex, and age.
- Abolished slavery and constitutionalized birthright citizenship and equal protection.
- Broke legal segregation with the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act.
- Helped defeat the Axis in World War II.
- Rebuilt shattered allies with the Marshall Plan.
- Helped build the postwar order through the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank.
- Invented the National Park model.
- Stood on the Moon.
- Built the Internet’s early backbone.
- Made GPS a free global public utility.
- Drove modern biomedicine through the polio vaccines and the Human Genome Project.
- Launched PEPFAR, one of the most successful anti-HIV efforts in history.
- Exported mass culture on a planetary scale — especially jazz, hip-hop, and the Blues.
Something with promise? Some of these list item are corrections of previous wrongdoings. Salvage. Proof that broken can be fixed.