O, let America be America again --
The land that never has been yet --
And yet must be -- the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine -- the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME --
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.
Sure, call me any ugly name you choose --
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America! . . .
Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain --
All, all the stretch of these great green states --
And make America again!
-- Langston Hughes
November 2008: The first presidential election of the 21st century. The first African-American to be nominated, then elected president. Record-setting fund-raising; record-setting voter turnout.
Let us reflect on the history that didn't happen.
America dodged a bullet. Stepped away from the brink. Dialed back the Doomsday Clock. Snatched the Republic back from the jaws of Empire. Pick your favorite cliché.
It all came so close to going so horribly wrong. It's neither histrionic nor hyperbolic to observe the disturbing parallels between the machinations of the "unitary executive" Bush administration following the Sept. 11 massacre and the blitzkrieg ascendancy of the National Socialist Party in Germany, set in motion by the Reichstag Fire. I have long believed, and still believe -- though one can never prove a counterfactual -- that if the Democratic Party had not retaken at least one house of Congress in the midterm elections of 2006, we would not have been watching an election on Nov. 4, 2008 . . . at least, not one in whose results we could place any credence. If there is a God, and if this God has any particular concern for America, he sent Hurricane Katrina to save us, not from gays and Mardi Gras but from the neoconservatives' slow-motion coup d'état. Whether by divine intervention or dumb luck, we barely escaped authoritarian dictatorship.
That day, we did better than escape authoritarian dictatorship: we repudiated it.
We did something incredible. Not only did we rise up in defense of democracy, we threw our support behind a new kind of democratic intensity. Barack Obama circumvented the Washington establishment, raising an enormous portion of his campaign funds directly from the citizenry in two- and three-digit amounts. In return, he demanded from us a higher level of civic engagement, a more communitarian spirit. This is not democracy as a spectator sport. It's something we've been called on to build together, with our foes as well as our friends.
And, implicitly, he demanded yet more: that, having found our voice, we continue to exercise it. That we own our government; that we no longer allow a powerful cabal to tell us what shall be possible.
"Yes, we can" -- but, more than that, we must.
It's on us now. We took back our government. What would we do with it? Would our representatives give us an economy that rewards all stakeholders, a resilient social safety net without holes, a foreign policy that honors our fellow human beings' dignity and rights? Would they lead us back to stability and security? When they hesitated, unable to shake off the preconceptions of the recent past, would we push them in the right direction, or would we hang our heads, let go of our hard-won hope and slink away in defeat?
Bertolt Brecht said, "He who fights may lose. He who does not fight has already lost." We won a round. Six months later there was another round to fight, and six months after that, there was another, and today there's yet another. The powerful do not share power willingly, and we must continually demand our share if we expect to retain it.
In his poem "Let America Be America Again," Langston Hughes contrasts the reality of an America
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!
with the great American ideal that has inspired generation after generation since the Declaration of Independence was signed. Barack Obama, president-elect, refocused our eyes on this ideal. He challenged us to make it truer than it has been at any time in our lives. He pledged to us that where we would go, he would do his best to take us. Has he fulfilled that pledge? I think it's fair to say that he's tried. Has Congress helped? Not by a long shot. Does this mean we should give up on seeing that pledge fulfilled, forget that we ever believed in it? Absolutely not.
The moment isn't over; let us not waste it. Let us not lose sight of how close we came to seeing this ideal permanently destroyed. Let us not wonder who in the world would have picked up the torch if we had allowed it to drop from our hand. Let us hold it higher, let it burn brighter and clearer, let us carry it farther . . . and when our arms or legs tire, as they inevitably will, let there be more of us right behind ready to carry it, and us, toward liberty, equality, justice and dignity for all.