What Made America Famous

Does anyone know Harry Chapin's music? He's best known for "Cat's in the Cradle", but he wrote many other songs. Jen's favorite is another song off the same album: “What Made America Famous” and the line that always sticks with me is near the end of the song, where the narrator says he still believes that we can still make an America like the one they still teach about in schools.

From the very beginning, America has never lived up to its ideals. Like every other country, there is a lot of ugliness just beneath the surface. But I like to think that those ideals are something real towards which we can aspire. That the Declaration of Independence isn’t pretty, empty words, that at some point in the future we can build a country where Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness really are considered unalienable rights for everyone. We’re a long way off, and I’m pessimistic that we’ll ever achieve it, but I believe in it because it’s something worth believing.

I was thinking about that during Comey’s testimony. Specifically:

"The reason this is such a big deal is, we have this big messy wonderful country where we fight with each other all the time. But nobody tells us what to think, what to fight about, what to vote for except other Americans. And that’s wonderful and often painful.

But we’re talking about a foreign government that, using technical intrusion and lots of other methods, tried to shape the way we think, we vote, we act.

That is a big deal. And people need to recognize it. It’s not about Republicans or Democrats. They’re coming after America, which I hope we all love equally. They want to undermine our credibility in the face of the world. They think that this great experiment of ours is a threat to them. So they’re going to try to run it down and dirty it up as much as possible.

That’s what this is about, and they will be back. Because we remain — as difficult as we can be with each other, we remain that shining city on the hill. And they don’t like it."

Defending Donald Trump, at this point is inconsistent with being a decent human being or a good American.