![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
talonkarrde"Don't let it be forgot, that once there was a spot, for one brief shining moment, that was known as Camelot." -Jacqueline Kennedy, about JFK's presidency.
My parents came here after Tiananmen Square, seeking a better life after the brutality of the Chinese government. America, to them - and to me - has for thirty years been that shining city on a hill, the place where immigrants across decades have come to seek a better life. The streets aren't paved with gold, but they have always held promise. Opportunity.
It is not perfect and it has never been perfect, not from the first moment where land was stolen from those who it rightfully belonged to, and not for a second throughout its bloody history, from the civil war to every movement to fight for rights: the suffragettes, the civil rights movement, stonewall and the gay rights movement, today’s trans-rights fights. And yet, it has stood, since the fall of the USSR, since the fall of the Nazis, as that place that has always accepted the "huddled masses, yearning to breathe free", as Lady Liberty has greeted so many that have passed through Ellis Island.
Ecco, America.
I went to law school because I believed in the law and I believed in the courts and I could trace a rich tradition from Marbury v. Madison to Brown v. Board of Education to NY Times v. Sullivan to Roe v. Wade to Lawrence v. Texas. I went to law school because I believed in a country where the courts stood for what was right, and where the legislature passed laws protecting people, not attacking them. Where the executive defended those who were downtrodden and who were refugees and who were victims.
I've come to DC more times than I remember. And since I was sixteen, with every trip, I would sit on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial at night. I would sit there and I would think about a man who bent the moral arc of America towards justice. People fought and bled and died for justice. Sons didn't come back to their mothers and fathers because they fell and they died and they were buried defending the ideals of the Union. They fought and bled and died for truth, and justice, and the American way.
I've spent a lot of nights past midnight looking towards the obelisk of the Washington Monument and thinking about the glory of America, as imperfect as she is, a place where there are courts and there are laws and where society uplifts instead of represses, where people can come together to do better than before.
Today, though, the government that millions of people count on to be there for them is… gone, as far as I can tell. USAID is gone, an agency that helped millions not die because we could help those who live on pennies a day get vaccinated against diseases. Park rangers are gone. People that help the elderly with social security are gone.
FEMA used to have an individual who worked in the Texas area who was a long-serving meteorologist in charge of warning coordination. That person would have coordinated emergency weather alerts with local authorities, to make sure that evacuations happened in dangerous situations. That person is gone, and was not replaced.
Ecco, America.
The Pax Americana was for a long time a peace that was enforced with nukes. But then came the fall of the USSR, and it became a peace enforced less by weaponry (though America's hands are, of course, quite bloody) and more by economic power. by trade. by the exporting of values.
Values of freedom, of self-determination, of justice.
We don't export justice anymore.
We sell people to another country to jail them. We allow for the deportation of individuals to war-torn countries that they have no connection to. We abandon alliances and we abandon principles that we have held - or at least purported to hold - since the beginning.
The thing that I grieve for - and it is grief, and it is profound - is that America has never been perfect but it tried harder than many nations do to be the more perfect union. It has a bloody history of slavery and colonialism, but many countries don't even acknowledge that they have problems. Asia is incredibly racist. Europe is better in some ways and yet worse in others. I have had multiple European colleagues who state things like 'why is America so concerned about racism? Here in Europe, we just judge people based on what they can achieve' - which is incredible to me.
It has so far to go in civil rights for minorities, and yet it is also a place where those rights could be fought for, where people had sit ins and marches and riots and changed the world and forced people to accept them. America has been the leading edge of technology and of society, of change. Because it is a young nation it is more unfettered by tradition than many of the old countries. Because it leads it seeks to continue to lead.
And now - even if things change in four years, in the next election, it will never be what it was before. Because America has shown to the world that it, too, is just another power-hungry state that will do whatever it wants because it has the power to do so. There can be no argument that we're better than China, or than Russia, or anyone. If I were a promising young scholar, why would I come here? What could I find here that I could not find elsewhere?
A young muslim woman - a scholar, who is getting her Ph.D., who has a masters from Columbia, who was a Fulbright scholar - is walking down the street. She is stopped by a man in a hoodie, who doesn’t have any identification on him. Others surround her, rapidly, taking away her cell phone, her backpack, and handcuffing her, escorting her, in handcuffs, to an unmarked car. Over the next couple of days, she is transported from Massachusetts to Louisiana, despite a court order prohibiting that movement. She is denied proper medical care. She is treated like a criminal, despite not being charged with anything, despite having broken no laws.
Her visa is revoked - but she is not told. When questioned why, the Secretary of State says that it is because she supports terrorism, a charge that is not backed up by any documents - and, indeed, the state department has documents showing the opposite.
This was a nation that was founded on the principle of free speech, and yet, this is a country now that detains people and imprisons those who exercise that freedom. It imprisons not based on laws, but on the whims of the powerful. She is free today - for now - because the system is not completely broken. Because a judge released her, and those in power listened - for now.
But a nation where she was detained at all is not a nation that I recognize.
Ecco. America.
no subject
Date: 2025-07-09 10:36 pm (UTC)Thank you for writing this.
Dan
no subject
Date: 2025-07-10 04:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-07-10 11:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-07-11 02:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-07-11 08:16 pm (UTC)What is most disheartening is just how easily the veil has been pulled back to expose what's lurked beneath the surface of this country for so long--the hate. The xenophobia. The racism. The sexism. The misogyny and homophobia. It's always been there, but this Administration has given the greenlight to let their followers put it out into the open.
This is so true. We have shown who we are as a nation, and there is no putting that genie back into the bottle.
Powerful and truthful read. Thank you for writing this.
no subject
Date: 2025-07-13 01:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-07-13 08:31 am (UTC)Oh and btw a very cute dog :)
no subject
Date: 2025-07-14 02:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-07-15 07:25 pm (UTC)