What Makes us Great

 

Crowd chanting USA at the DNC pic.twitter.com/zNh8WBPNRM

— Acyn (@Acyn) August 19, 2024

The above clip is from a full house at the DNC showing pride in the USA. They aren't calling for mass deportations. They don't want a day-one dictator to make America great by looking towards some mythologized past. They don't want some parade of demagogues to tell them horror stories about an imagined dystopia in the hopes they will trade today's freedoms for a false promise of security in a less-free tomorrow.

They want to move forward. Time's arrow goes in one direction, and they want that trajectory to bend towards justice. 

This diverse crowd has come together to do the work, to put in the sweat equity of democracy. The first night of the DNC was a crowded stage and at times, I felt something in my heart swelling about that. Unity through inclusion. Strength in protecting and defending one another's freedoms and hearing one another's stories. Standing up for what is right and even great about this country. 

There were too many elements of the evening for me to put it all into words--but there was something more progressive and confident about that than I have heard Democrats sounding for some time. Unabashedly pro-labor and pro-reproductive freedom.  Clear about the responsibility of the wealthy corporations to pay their fair share. Clear about support for legal immigration. 

We saluted President Biden for the work that has been done in his administration, and know that much remains to be done, and what to do to get it done. I saw the deep bench of my party's future and felt just...good about who we are. And when my president spoke about the good choice he made in choosing Kamala Harris as his running mate and what a good president she would be, it sounded heartfelt and right. 

The GOP, and the Project 2025 that they never referenced at their convention (although it surely sponsored them) mock diversity and inclusion not just with words, but policies that shore up the privileges of the wealthy, the White, the male, the straight, and the Christian. And sure, no reason those can't be some of the best of us--but the rest of us are some of the best of us too. 

Our great nation deserves the best of us, not people who are no better than they need to be and want to elect one of the worst of us. 

It's just as simple as that.