A Promised Land
Thursday, January 16
From Barack Obama’s A Promised Land:
What I can say for certain is that I’m not yet ready to abandon the possibility of America—not just for the sake of future generations of Americans but for all of humankind. For I’m convinced that the pandemic we’re currently living through is both a manifestation of and a mere interruption in the relentless march toward an interconnected world, one in which peoples and cultures can’t help but collide. In that world—of global supply chains, instantaneous capital transfers, social media, transnational terrorist networks, climate change, mass migration, and ever-increasing complexity—we will learn to live together, cooperate with one another, and recognize the dignity of others, or we will perish. And so the world watches America—the only great power in history made up of people from every corner of the planet, comprising every race and faith and cultural practice—to see if our experiment in democracy can work. To see if we can do what no other nation has ever done. To see if we can actually live up to the meaning of our creed.
This vision for America is, in some way, a form of obligation.
It’s not just a hope for America to succeed, but a matter of global necessity. As if the fate of the American experiment is tied to the fate of the world, and success or failure here determines whether humanity as a whole will make it.
And the reality is that experiments fail all the time. What’s left if this one does? Obama doesn’t answer, maybe because he doesn’t want to, or maybe because he doesn’t know.