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The America Worth Fighting For

If your eyes are clear and open right now you can see it: this is a pivot point for us, America.

It is the place we collectively turn toward back toward our best selves or slide into the abyss of the very worst of who we are capable of being. In real time, we are crafting our collective legacy and the world is watching to see who we will be. Our children are too, along with a vast multitude we will never know, who will inherit the nation we will leave them.

When history replays these days, they will tell the story of this country as either the time decent, empathetic people crossed lines of political party, faith tradition, and surface differences and stood together to push back a rising tide of fascism—or the days we all stopped giving a damn and fully consented to the darkness for good. These will be marked as the moments we collectively succumbed to a million small assaults on decency—or when we decided to stop the bleeding once and for all.

There is no question anymore for those not deluded by white supremacy, nationalistic religion, unacknowledged privilege, or self-preservation: we are facing an existential threat.
It is a homegrown movement defined by an abandonment of empathy, a rejection of personal liberties, a removal of human rights, an elimination of diversity.
There is nothing redemptive or life-giving in it.
The only question remaining, is whether or not we will abide it.
In the presence of such great hatred we cannot claim neutrality.
We are either adversary or we are accomplice; the vocal opposition or willing collaborators.

In these very seconds in which we find ourselves, in this singular day, you and I get to decide whether we will leave those on the horizon of history something beautiful or grotesque. It’s really that simple, that elemental, that close.

This is not about waiting for someone else to do something: not God or a political party or a social media celebrity or some faceless people you imagine will rescue you.

No, friend, there is no superhero flying in to save the day—you need and I to save it.

And the way we will save it is by finding whatever it is that is that pulls us out of the paralyzing funk of grief, sadness, and disbelief we’ve been in—and into the jagged trenches of passionate resistance.

We will save this place by deciding what matters most in this life, and that it matters enough to do more than we’re doing to defend and protect it right now.

You and I need to decide what is worth fighting for and we need to take a deep breath and step back into the trenches . We need to speak and write and work and protest and vote, and do all the things we’ve been waiting for someone else to do; the things we wish more good people in the past had done.

This movement may cause friction in our families.
It may bring turbulence to our marriages.
It may sever our friendships.
It may yield collateral damage to our careers.
It may cost us financially and personally.
It may alienate us from our neighbors.
It may push us from our churches.
It may be inconvenient and uncomfortable and painful but that is the price of liberty— and you and I need to pay it because other people paid it before us.
Anything we lose now, will be our failure to hold steady the arc of the moral universe.
No excuses will be good enough to the generations that follow us about why we did nothing or grew too weary to keep going, so we need to stop trying to find them.

I don’t know what matters enough to move you from complacency or indecision or selfishness or apathy:
the human rights atrocities,
the perversions of Christianity,
the pillaging of the environment,
the Constitutional violations,
the cries of migrant children,
the Supreme Court hijacking,
the attacks of public education,
the dismantling of healthcare,
the anti-Science conspirators,
the school shootings that go ignored,
the LGBTQ teenagers being harassed,
the assaults on women’s autonomy over their bodies,
the malice of our public servants,
the twisting of objective truth,
the Nazis marching in our streets,
the dumbing down of our discourse.

Does love or equality or compassion or diversity or humanity still move the needle within you?

I don’t know what is worth you doing something right now—but you do.

So, instead of lamenting how horrible it all is, decide to make it less horrible.
Instead of looking to the sky and wondering why no one is doing anything, you do something.
Do it in the small, close, here, now, and doable of your daily existence where you have both proximity and agency.
Step out of the cloistered place of your private despair and into a small world that you can alter by showing up.
Use your gifts and your influence and your breath and your hands—and fix something that is badly broken before it breaks beyond repair.

Affirm life, speak truth, defend the vulnerable, call out injustices—and gladly brave the criticisms and the wounds you sustain in doing it, knowing that they are a small price to pay for the nation that could be if you speak—or the one that will be if you do not.

Chances are you won’t actually be called to die for these cause and these people, but when you do leave this planet you will have lived for them. That in itself will be a beautiful legacy.

If you aren’t finding your voice right now, don’t bother worrying about it later.

You won’t have one much longer.

There is an America worth fighting for.

Find it.

Fight for it.

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