We Americans
Election Reflections #6: News from the Future
“All the News That’s Fit to Print”
Today is January 17, 2050, and on this momentous celebration of Martin Luther King’s birthday, the United States has reached a milestone of its own – we are now a nation with no ethnic majority. But that’s not all: in the eighty-seven years since Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, we’ve shifted dramatically from a society dominated by race, and where over 88% identified as white, to one where an increasing majority of Americans have moved beyond the construct altogether, leaving not just racism but racialism – belief in the idea of race itself behind. We simply no longer find that paradigm useful.
That one shift would go on to change everything about us Americans, allowing us to become a society that embraces all of us and not just some of us and moving us closer than ever to Dr. King’s dream, one where “People are judged not by the color of their skin but the content of their character.” For that alone we should be proud.
But even that was only the most obvious of sociocultural changes we’d undergo. Both our understanding of gender and sexuality, along with who determined them, would change in ways never imagined, and we’d discover that people of all faiths and non-faiths had equally valuable contributions to make. Even our concepts of beauty, intelligence and the ways we live in relationship would change. Our assumptions about ourselves and one another would evolve, and we’d learn that differences are not disabilities. But if this recounting makes it sound like a smooth transition, it wasn’t. Our journey to here and now was less non-stop flight and more “long and winding road”.
Yet along the way, there were inflection points; from the re-integration of our military (which is where, during the American Revolution, we started) to the ending of slavery, from the first Journey of Reconciliation to women’s and LGBTQ+ rights. But most obvious was the 2008 election of Barack Obama; a moment when a descendant of an enslaved people became head of our nation. Americans from every background, ancestry and state came together to make this milestone, once only a pipe dream, reality. It was so unprecedented that we thought this one act would transport us instantly to the Promised Land. But the journey had just started, and getting there would require our own forty years in the desert.
In 2012, to our embarrassment, we started posting signs saying things like, “Don’t Re-NIG in 2012”, the start of a viciousness in politics we’d not seen since the 1800s, utilizing racialized tactics that, though we didn’t know it, were already falling apart. We’d blame our flailing economy on greater minority visibility and brand LGBTQ equality, “special” rights; just as we’d done with respect to African Americans in the 1960s. We’d foster the perception that we were being overrun by Muslims, terrorists and “Illegals”; just as we’d done with everyone from Chinese to Jews a century earlier. We’d lament states’ rights that were being curtailed, but ignore and minimize egregious human rights abuses.
This land, some would insist, was always meant to be their land. But now others were starting to take what God himself (they’ve made it clear that their God is unequivocally male) had given them, and unless they stood up – right then – and “took America back”, before their constantly declining numbers made staying in power an impossibility, all would be lost. That meant declaring war on their fellow Americans. And before we knew it, “one nation, indivisible” had been abandoned and “out of many, one” had lost all importance. But even this wasn’t new.
Right from the beginning we were of two minds. On the one hand, many saw the birth of this new nation as an opportunity, to do better, aspire higher and become something the world had never seen before, a society of equals. That’s our birthright. But so is the mindset held by some that their faction was inherently superior and far more deserving of all the good things in life, framing that same society as a place where everyone is either the butcher or the cattle, the hammer or the nail. We’ve inherited this as well, along with all its attendant consequences.
By the mid-1800s, we were a people caught between the ideology of exploitation that was turning us into the wealthiest nation in the world and the self-evident truths that had birthed us. Before the metaphorical ink on the Constitution was dry, we’d found ourselves falling short of the aspirations set forth in our Declaration of Independence, committing egregious crimes against humanity and, at the same time, seeking justifying narratives, assurances that we were the heroes of the story.
We’d fought a war of independence so that Americans could be citizens instead of subjects, only to replicate the tiered system here, whether through slavery or race massacres, impoverishment or deportation. The clash of these two paradigms ultimately led to the American Civil War, the deadliest conflict in our nation’s history. And even that wasn’t enough to banish this toxic ideology.
Southern states enacted Black Codes that deprived the recently emancipated of a life and Northern states passed their own versions to prevent them from migrating, essentially trapping these already exploited and traumatized people in the South. Democratic senators, citing the threat of Negro rule, resisted laws that made lynching illegal and created laws that made prison labor profitable.
The early 20th century saw us building on the wealth accrued through slavery by exploiting European immigrants for their labor, then, when they protested, used law enforcement and troops to break them. In the 1950s, we terrorized ethnic communities; marching with rifles and flags and signs that said, “Jews will not replace us”. In the 1960s, we weaponized sacred texts and conscripted the faithful into a culture war against those who dared fight for equality.
In the 70s, we blamed the push to pay workers a living wage, instead of predatory practices, for a troubled economy. In the 80s, we blamed Asian Americans for running Detroit carmakers out of business, and Latinx Americans for taking “our” jobs. We burned dozens of African American churches across the South in the 90s, and after 9/11, targeted Muslim and Middle Eastern Americans.
The 2000s would find us blaming our fragmentation on same-sex marriage instead of on bigotry and human disregard. In the 2010s, we brandished assault weapons at rallies, marching with rifles and flags and signs that said “Black lives don’t matter, and neither do their votes.” “God, will you keep us wherever we go?” sang the Avett Brothers in their somber recounting of our history, “Will you forgive us for where we’ve been? We Americans?”
Then came the 2020s, with waning majorities, fueled by an almost apocalyptic fervor, re-envisioning our cooperative political process as a war and declaring our fellow Americans the enemy. Segregationists and supremacists declared themselves warriors of righteousness called to vanquish the “evil” that now marred the heart of America and turn America’s heart back to (their version of) God. Turn or burn. But they made a near-fatal error, mistaking a 2024 Trump win as a changing of the tide back in their favor. It wasn’t. It was a call to action for this new breed of American. And when they came, they came in power.
No longer were they the besieged and bullied minority pleading for benevolence and tolerance from the historic majority. They’d awakened to the fact that they were the new majority. And with that majority power came the vote. This twenty-year period from 2012 (the first year non-Anglo births surpassed Anglo births, aka, the birth year of Generation Alpha) to 2032 (the first presidential election impacted by this non-majority generation) came to be known as our nation’s Time of Turmoil; a reckoning we’d been postponing since our first encounters with indigenous peoples and the three-fifths compromise, and an inflection point as consequential as the Civil War.
That’s because the people who’d been intent on holding societal power wouldn’t relinquish it willingly. They’d fight with all they had, using every tool in their arsenal, ethical and unethical, legal and illegal, doing everything from making an end-run around democracy to declaring us a religious state.
They took over institutions and the government, deprived people of the vote and declared us a religious state. And they nearly succeeded. “We are faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today,” Dr. King once said. “Procrastination is still the thief of time. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words ‘Too Late’.”
This was almost our fate. We’d rail so hard against the ties that made us one nation that, like the cables on a collapsing suspension bridge, they’d start to snap, one after the other. The same faction that had never truly believed that all are created equal, that had invented the idea of the “white race” in order to maintain unequal power, seeing our inevitable demographic shift, didn’t change their stance. They changed tactics.
Instead of continuing to declare, “Black lives DON’T Matter – and Neither Do Their Votes”, they’d claim an even higher authority – that of God – or, at least their version of the concept. “We don’t need a majority,” they’d say, “We’ve got God on our side.” Or, as one spokesman put it, “Fuck democracy – I stand with Jesus Christ.”
In 2025, they controlled all branches of the federal government and their faction, like any good villain does, began monologuing; reveling in their victory, declaring the battle over. And it was. Just not in the way they thought.
Because even after cobbling together every vote they could, even after co-opting Christianity, radicalizing churchgoers and militarizing pastors, after stoking white hysteria and scapegoating everyone from Muslims to gays, after villainizing both women who required an abortion and women who were trans, after decrying a so-called “war on men” and declaring this our nation’s Armageddon, even after all that, only a third of eligible voters voted for them with another third supporting the opposition.
They devised a three-fold strategy for gaming the vote: 1. Winnow down the opposing side’s voter base in every way possible, from disqualifying voters to simply making voting harder, 2. Target races that didn’t coincide with a run for the presidency, which gave their shrinking, yet deeply devoted voting base more influence, and 3. Shift the narrative – frame this as a conflict between two sides – red and blue, liberals and conservatives, the Faithful and the Godless. The “patriots” and those who “hate America”.
They hoped that simply by ignoring that third-third – voters who weren’t, by any means with them but who’d lost hope that the vote could make a difference – they’d remain focused simply on survival. That, by reframing the narrative, pretending this massive contingent didn’t exist, they’d simply stay on the sidelines, dispirited and uninvolved, preoccupied with keeping food on the table and a roof over their heads. They didn’t.
And they didn’t just vote, they ran. Agents of equality rose up in red and blue states, from Alabama to California, New York to Mississippi, in both the Democratic and Republican parties; ousting every politician who sought to secure power for themselves or use their position to fight for anything less than the well-being of all of us. They reminded every public official that they serve at the pleasure of the people, all the people and that if they wouldn’t honorably fulfill their duties, there were plenty of regular, everyday Americans who could.
Those regular, everyday Americans, ones committed not to taking America back but to taking it forward, ran for offices across the nation at the local, state and national levels. And with ever-increasing frequency, they won, forever changing the face of politics in the process. In churches across the United States, the same consciousness that once compelled people of faith to do everything from becoming abolitionists to joining the Civil Rights movement was awakened once again and they, these religious humanitarians banished militancy from their midst. Republicans took back their party, becoming, once again, the rightful heirs of Lincoln’s legacy, and defections from the sinking ship of social supremacy would accelerate the ideology’s demise. And before we knew it, there we were on the verge of something utterly new.
Out of the ashes of a nation we, the people had set afire, something beautiful; a unified theory of American culture would emerge. People of every identity and from every place began to grasp what it means to be a new nation, one conceived in liberty, and what that requires of us. We’d banish second-class citizenship. Gender/sexuality diversity would become the norm. Faith groups would become peacemakers. And constructs we’d long thought of as immutable would evolve. In the end, we’d discover that this diverse blossoming was exactly what we needed, and where we’d always been headed. It’s who we are; just as much as “land of the free and home of the brave”.
But getting here wasn’t easy. We Americans have always undertaken social progress in fits and starts; steps forward and back. The Civil War, Reconstruction, segregation, integration; etc., a cycle on repeat. The downfall of American fascism was no more certain than Hitler’s defeat, and supremacists, with the crowd at their back, were willing to kill for their cause. But others, like the Freedom Riders, were willing to do so much more; they were willing to die for it.
It would be them, those among us with the power to look unflinchingly at America’s faults and still see her beauty, who would turn out to be our saving grace. Relentlessly, they’d challenge us to go forward rather than turn back. To hold fast to the dream and in the spirit of that civil rights anthem, to overcome. “Oh, deep in my heart, I do believe that we shall overcome someday.”
It was in 1776 at our nation’s first Congress that E pluribus unum – “out of many, one” – was adopted as our nation’s Great Seal, based on a saying by Roman philosopher Cicero, who stated, “When each person loves the other as much as himself, it makes one out of the many (unas fiat ex pluribus). This one idea gave us a way forward, allowing us to build a singular nation while remaining separate states, craft a common spiritual ethos while practicing different faiths, and create a common culture while expressing many ethnicities.
But that wasn’t all. According to Cicero, it’s not sameness – whether of opinion or ancestry, religion or politics – that makes one out of the many. It’s love. That’s the great unifier. It took us nearly three centuries to grasp that only by embracing our inherent “manyness” could we achieve true “oneness”. And only by doing so could our nation’s unfinished business, stemming back to the dawn of the Revolution finally be declared “finished”.
Today is January 17, 2050, and America, despite her fumbles, if not because of them, more than ever, reflects the virtues on which she was founded. Despite all it took to get here, our direction was set at the very conception of what would become the “United States”, and was invoked in our declaration that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are everyone’s birthright. From the start, we were a nation of strangers who would become family. And we’ve proven time and again that we are at our best when we embrace this unique and powerful heritage. As we celebrate Martin Luther King’s 121st birthday, let us remember that.
Peyton Ellis – The New York Times – January 16, 2050
Thanksgiving, as I mentioned in an earlier post, has always been my favorite holiday.
Some of it’s because it occurs in autumn, already my favorite season. Some of it’s because of the tender spiritual space it invites us into, one suffused with love and gratitude, abundance and kindness, one filled with friends and family (not to mention the feast Mary prepared and our gathering in the living room to watch The Wizard of Oz…).
And some of it’s because of how it focuses us on the collective “we”, on who we Americans are together. That’s what prompted me to go back and rework this “article from the future” originally included in This Land Is Your Land, incorporating the outcome of the 2024 election and contextualizing it in our broader story.
The article, though obviously fictional, is based on our real history, the choices, both wise and unwise, sustaining and self-destructive, we’ve made, why we made them and how we ended up here. The goal was always to show that the story we’re shaping is an unfinished one, that one day, those who come after us will look back and speak about the society we handed off to them, and that history will judge us by whether or not we contributed to the forming of a more perfect union.
The future described above is one possible version but not the only one. The fate that meets us could just as easily be one where we’ve taken our factionalism to its logical conclusion, one where we’ve completely severed the ties that bind us and now exist as a nation of feuding minorities. I’m sure there are others, from A Handmaid’s Tale to Hunger Games. But the point is, whatever future we inherit tomorrow is one we’re choosing today.
(One of my favorite Pete Seeger songs is What Did You Learn In School? Here’s a live version with lyrics on the screen. I think you’ll see why I love it.)
At the same time, it’s important to recognize that even when it feels like nothing like this has ever happened before, in all likelihood, it has. I’m guessing it felt dire when the even more draconian Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was passed, or when Lincoln or Kennedy was assassinated, or at so many other times when it felt like those advocating for an America that works only for some of us had won. But in every case, history would prove them wrong and their declaration of “mission accomplished” grossly mistaken. That’s because of us, we, the people.
Over our nation’s existence, there have been approximately 550 million lives lived; all of which have shaped us – some have made us better, and others, worse. But every life left its mark, on America, and on who America is because of them. Then, there’s who we are together. Like individuals, societies also have a life, and with that life, they shape the broader human story. Some have made us better, and others, worse; with each society getting to determine what their contribution to that grand story will be.
That’s where we are today – at that same crossroads. Because, while those before us may have decided who we are, it rests with us to determine who we will be and the fate we’ll meet. Maya Angelou said: "History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again." That’s my wish this Thanksgiving weekend – that we can continue the work of learning from our history instead of reliving it. That we can allow, as the Avett Brothers sang, the love in our hearts and the pain and the memory to all coexist.
As for me, I spent the holiday participating in a program I and a number of other hospital chaplains founded in 2020, at the height of COVID. Realizing how many seniors would be on their own and unable to gather with family, we took Thanksgiving dinner for two and had a meal with them in their home. This was our fifth year to do so, with requests for the one-on-one dinner dates growing rather than trailing off. I know for me, I’ve gotten so much more out of these dinners than I’ve given.
In each case, I’ve met seemingly ordinary people who, in their day, did extraordinary things to help make us a better people. One person participated in an early attempt to disrupt atomic testing in the 1950s. One traveled to Selma for the 1965 march to Montgomery, another was at the March on Washington, one was a schoolteacher who, like Jane Elliott (I told Jane’s story in There’s a Place for Us), taught her students about equality and one was a leading LGBTQ+ rights activist in the 1970s and early 80s. They became allies, strengthening the cause by providing financial support and participating in nationwide boycotts. And perhaps most importantly, they used the power of the ballot to hold their representative accountable.
The fact that neither they nor their stories are well-known makes them no less remarkable and all the more inspiring. This year, in particular, they were exactly the reminder I needed. They’re part of why I’m immensely grateful to those who came before us, those who have been our nation’s saving grace. Likewise, I hold a deep, resonant admiration for the generations ahead of us, our children and grandchildren who weren’t born with the same cultural limitations we’ve had to fight to overcome and who are already using that profound freedom to take us forward.
But, perhaps more than anything, it’s my belief in you and me, those of us with our hand on the plow today, that’s constantly strengthened by the everyday acts of kindness I get to witness – everything from the people who lovingly prepared the Thanksgiving dinners for seniors to the chaplains who take the time to truly see these amazing people and to appreciate them. My sister Crystal organized a Thanksgiving dinner for all the residents of the Bay Area home where Bernice, my mother lives and a local church gave out Thanksgiving meal kits – complete with turkey – to more than a hundred Oklahoma families. And that’s only a few examples.
Together, we get to be co-conspirators in charting a path forward, ensuring that our best days still lie ahead of us and that the best parts of our story are yet to be written. So, even with the uncertainty, and perhaps even because of it, I find myself immensely excited to be alive at this pivotal moment; truly grateful to be a witness to the realization of the dream that birthed us and compelled to do my small part in making that happen.
A long-held Thanksgiving Day ritual of mine is to put on George Winston’s piano instrumental simply titled, Thanksgiving. For those four minutes and eight seconds, I let myself sit silently, reflecting on gratitude, my life, all the beautiful ways that life intersects with others, and all I’m grateful for. I give thanks. And invariably, no matter what’s occurring in my life or the world, I’m met with a powerful strength. I find myself deeply rooted, once again, in the same resolve that allowed those who came before us to make us fundamentally better.
Pete Seeger, in a live group singing of We Shall Overcome, said:
And the most important verse is the one they wrote down in Montgomery, Alabama. They said, “We are not afraid.” The young people there taught everybody else a lesson. All the older people that had learned how to compromise and learned how to take it easy and be polite and get along and leave things as they were, those young people taught us all a lesson. They stood and sang, “We are not afraid, we are not afraid, we are not afraid today. Oh, deep in my heart, I do believe that we shall overcome someday.”
He was speaking of the Selma to Montgomery march and the high school and college students in Montgomery who refused to run from Alabama State Troopers charging toward them on horseback, threatening to trample them. They stood their ground, first, shouting, “We’re not afraid of you!” Then, someone started singing We Shall Overcome with the lyrics, “We are not afraid.” That became their anthem, them, actually marching toward the horses. And just like that, they were the ones with the power. They overcame. We can too. And we will.
The framers of Project 2025 think they’ve written their preferred ending to the American story, that they’ve rerouted the future. They have no idea what’s coming.
Happy Thanksgiving.