https://medium.com/@deannakaykreisel/the-unraveling-of-the-unraveling-of-america-db63ed82fa25
Extracts: ..the readership for this essay is almost certainly liberals and lefties — those drawn to its dire, scolding title . It is these very people who are most hurting right now, most angry and disillusioned, swinging wildly back and forth between bitter hatred of the alt-right minority in our country and self-excoriation and shame. We are the bait for these clicks — I know, of course, because I was also drawn like a moth to a flame by the promise of yet another diagnosis of our ills and prognosis of our inexorable slide into fascist dictatorship. We can’t help but read these pieces, because we are in pain and we care about our country.
Let me be clear: we are in bad shape. America is in the shitter right now, and no thoughtful person either here or abroad fails to understand that fact. We’re at a crucial juncture in our nation’s history, and if this next election goes the wrong way we are basically toast. Several deep, longstanding, intractable social ills have led us to this place--...colonialism, genocide, slavery, racism, a history of frontier individualism. But militating against those ills is the passionate commitment of many of us to the “American ideals, as celebrated by Madison and Monroe, Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Kennedy” that are still floating around down here, and are currently finding their voice on the streets of cities and small towns across the country. Those ideals have always been in tension with our racist, genocidal past (and present), but it is a tension that is visible and dynamic, and on occasion gives rise to real and lasting change. Maybe the American experiment is not salvageable; that is a real and distinct possibility. Maybe we’re about to go down in flames this November. But faced with such an option, the only choice is to fight, and fight hard, and to look for succor and aid from those who wish us well.