Susan Palmer's Exquisite Now

The United Sates is a mythic place. It’s never quite existed as billed. It elevates freedom, yet its earliest economy was based on slave labor. It fought against genocide in Europe, yet tried mightily to destroy the continent’s first peoples.

It welcomed immigrants, yet across many decades and for different reasons persecuted the Chinese and the Japanese who came here.

Still, the best thinkers had these ideals of government chosen by the people and restrained by the rule of law. They envisioned a country where people of differing beliefs and backgrounds could exist side by side with respect.

When France gave the United States the Statue of Liberty, a poet wrote a fine sonnet extolling the virtue of a welcoming place. Titled The New Colossus, it’s something to consider as current government leaders exercise power rather than restraint.

No country lives up to its highest ideals. None of us as individuals do. But we have ideals that we publicly honor as a way of agreeing that we want to be our best selves. It’s tragic to watch those ideals being so undermined.

Here’s the text of The New Colossus, written by poet Emma Lazarus, 143 years ago. Apparently we no longer aspire to be Mother of Exiles. Seems we’re reverting to the old Colossus, aspiring to domination rather than peaceful co-existence.. I wonder if the people will exercise their control of government in the coming year and in 2028, and whether this government, so bent on power, will actually allow it. And whether the generals, at the end of the day, will go along.