It’s Always Darkest

Finding the light while grappling with what we’ve done

As an adult, I’ve never been much for celebrating the Fourth of July. Flag waving and other obvious displays of patriotism make me uncomfortable. This is likely because I was in college when Ronald Reagan was president and the Republican Party began its decades’ long project of co-opting patriotism, which in their iteration often crossed over into jingoism. Through deceit and repetition they managed to convince a not insignificant percentage of the population—with the assistance of corporate media and the increasingly influential right wing echo-chamber, that they represented “real” Americans—the white, the rural, the Christian, the intolerant—while painting the rest of us (even those of us who lived in a state that had been one of the thirteen original colonies) as anti-American interlopers who wanted to turn this great democracy into a Communist hellhole in which we sought—the horrors—to level the playing field.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. . . . That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it. . . . Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Let’s start with a correction. The truths enumerated at the beginning of the Declaration of Independence were not truths at all. Those inalienable rights to which the founders referred applied to a certain class of men—the landed, the white, the free. Women didn’t enter into the equation at all. These omissions—glaring and intentional—have been addressed intermittently and to some effect over the ensuing century and a half, but never sufficiently. That failure guaranteed that our country—with all of its possibility and enormous potential, would never truly be a democracy. That failure to a large degree led us to the point at which we now find ourselves—the aspirational more perfect union, that truly representative, multi-cultural democracy that was implicit in the founders’ words, whether they knew it or not, is further from our ability to achieve it than it has ever been.

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I’m in Italy at the moment, on a train from Milan to Florence, and I confess I am relieved not to be around—or have to avoid—the inevitable celebrations going on in America today. I don’t have the heart for it. Every week since January 20 of this year has presented new challenges, unleashed new horrors, and revealed the depths of the cruelty of those to whom we have once again granted power. Every week has made it harder to process the rapid, systematic, and breath-taking dismantling of the institutions, norms, and rights we have for far too long taken for granted. This week, which culminated yesterday with the passage of the most depraved piece of legislation in modern American political history, felt less like a turning point (we turned as soon as 74 million people voted to put the most depraved “leader” in all of American history back into office) than a point of no return.

What does it mean when the party in power, the party with all of the power, turns its back on the ideals upon which this country was founded? What does it mean when the party in power—and the very Court that was established to uphold and defend this nation’s Constitution—feel unbound by the law or by that founding document? And what does it mean when the members of the party in power are so in thrall to their leader that they willingly abandon their independence, cede their constitutional authority, and betray the very Americans who put them in power in the first place simply to appease a man so vicious, so deviant, and so traitorous that it beggars the imagination?

I think the meaning is clear and the answer is simple: We cannot trust anyone in the Republican Party; we cannot take them at their word; and we cannot allow elected Democrats to pretend that their Republican colleagues can be counted on—ever—to do the right thing.

The more important question is where does that leave us—or, perhaps more accurately, what are we going to do about it?

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Last night, I had the great good fortune to attend the Bruce Springsteen concert in Milan. The crowd was extraordinary and the band was on fire. As he has been doing since the last leg of this tour began in Manchester back in May, Bruce said the following:

The mighty E Street Band is here tonight to call upon the righteous power of art, of music, of rock and roll in dangerous times. The America that I love, the America I’ve sung to you about, that’s been a beacon of hope and liberty for two-hundred and fifty years is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent, and treasonous administration. Tonight we ask all who believe in democracy and the best of our American experiment to rise with us, raise your voices, stand with us against authoritarianism, and let freedom ring.

Having recently elected the far-right, fascist-adjacent Giorgia Meloni, the Italian people are dealing with their own crisis of conscience. Their fervently positive reaction to Bruce’s remarks was a reminder that we are not alone and that he has the ability to reach people many others cannot reach. More people in his position need to speak out as bluntly. And it is up to us to encourage more musicians and more artists of all kinds to speak out both individually and collectively against the encroaching fascism that threatens all of the things we most cherish—freedom, happiness, community, and art.

I’m not saying we should rely on our elected officials or anybody with influence to show us the way out of this darkness. We must demand that those who have the means and the power speak out, do more, do better.

But it is we who must lead. We are the light that will guide the way. Eventually, when the time is right, the most effective way to stop the fascists and their enablers in the corporate media is to shut it all down. That requires coordination, organization, and cooperation which on a large scale will not come easily. And it will take time.

But there are opportunities along the way to build and to remember how vitally important all of you—with your dedication, your refusal to look away, your incandescent belief in a better future—are to the project at hand.

It will require a stubborn insistence upon being better; it will mean continuing the hard work of facing the truth of where we are, who we are, and how far we have to go. But my belief in you to do that work and embrace the struggles is as enduring as my belief in this country’s ability to fulfill, at long last, its promise.