Hope lies in those who survive suffering

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DENVER, CO — I have never been more optimistic about the future of our planet than I am today. My hope is not rooted in the moral monstrosity that is mainstream America but in the people who have survived and thrived in the face of its radical suffering. America is somewhere between an absurd comedy (Trump) and a horrifying tragedy.
We as a species are now at the crossroads. We will live together in harmony or we will perish. We live in this dialectic tension. The mother is eating her own baby and we wonder why. Should we abort or should we be her midwife. What of America is worth saving let alone each other. The saving of America is really a false choice once we realize that she never existed, and yet the promise of Lady Liberty—Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free—remains a promise worth fighting for—worth dying for—worth loving back into possibility.
America now finds itself in a state of liminality, we find ourselves waking up from a drunken stupor, powerless to make change and yet wondering what can we do now in this state of dystopia. I pray, that we first grieve. For a democracy that never was, for people who we have and continue to oppress and as strange as it sounds—for our own complicity in the design of this glorious myth that we must now salvage from her heap of lies.“America, you’ve never been America to me, but I swear this oath—you will be.”

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