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We Can’t Eat Our Rights
A better future means nothing if we don’t survive to get there
Something’s different now — or, maybe it’s the old same again — I don’t know which. Ever since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, I feel like I’m watching reruns from a previous season of America. The old actors are back, or new ones are playing the old roles. We’re back to when the news was filled with more global geopolitics than nationalism, when we talked about the military-industrial complex more than culture wars, when the enduring world order made itself painfully known and we knew it ran on war.
Ron DeSantis looks like a hangnail by comparison.
The twisted blessing of the Trump era was that it made our societal illness so apparent: we live in a racist world, and we founded a racist country here. The poison of our nation’s history was sucked right up to the surface where it marched in the open with blazing tiki torches and demanded we recognize it for what it is. No longer could we plaster over the ugliness of colonization, slavery and our interwoven social caste systems. There was no more denying the truth of what we are.
At the same time, the Trump era obscured something too. The political game in 2016 seemed so different than it was in 2006. Rooting out racism, misogyny, homophobia, xenophobia, transphobia — these…
