This Is the Best America Has to Offer
Trump’s presidency showed us America’s worst. America’s best is just as depressing.
Like most Black people, I’ve spent my entire life waiting for America to reveal its worst self to us. For as bad as, say, Reagan or Bush(es) or mass incarceration or drone strikes or overthrown governments were to us, it always felt like this country was preparing us for a floor to the despair. Donald Trump’s presidency felt like that floor: the moment when America fully embraced White supremacy without any pretense, without any attempt to act like this country is run on anything but anti-Blackness. Trump’s presidency wasn’t a revelation so much as a confirmation.
The movement that brought about the Biden presidency and the grassroots organizing that brought Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff to the Senate was supposed to represent the polar opposite of the past four years. This was supposed to be the best America has to offer. And I think this is the best America, as it’s currently constructed, has to give. A Senate not under the thumb of Mitch McConnell. A president with a mandate from the country to undo everything Trump did—and the power to do so. This is the pinnacle of possibility from the U.S. government.
And it’s woefully insufficient.
