We’re Better than This. Aren’t We?

For me, this election is intensely personal. I came to this country in 1976, with my mother and grandmother, as a 7-year-old immigrant from the Soviet Union. My family, like so many before and since, was fleeing poverty and oppression. Because the United States took us in and gave us dignity and prosperity, I have always loved this country. Americanism has been my religion, as it was for two of my heroes, Theodore Roosevelt and John McCain.

As I have grown older, I have developed a more nuanced understanding of the United States and its complex history — sometimes uplifting, sometimes shameful — noble and ignoble strands wound tightly together like a double helix. Historic wrongs have still not been righted — in particular, the poisonous legacy of slavery and segregation — but I thought we were moving in the right direction.

Then came 2016. I was devastated to see a dangerous demagogue rise to power by spewing hatred and promoting division. This was not the America I knew. This was the kind of thing that happened over there — in the old country — not on this “shining city upon a hill.” As our luster dimmed — as democratic norms shattered and body bags piled up — there were times when I lost hope in what Lincoln called “the last best hope of earth.”

How could President Trump be so awful and yet maintain the support of so many? This has been a terrible indictment, to me, of the country I love. But my faith in the United States, while battered, has not vanished. I continue to believe — to hope — to pray — that we are better than this. Aren’t we? We certainly should be better than this.

Americans have won nearly three times as many Nobel Prizes as the next-closest nation. We defeated diseases such as measles and polio, performed the first organ transplant and helped map the genome. We invented the airplane, harnessed the atom, landed on the moon and pioneered the personal computer and the Internet. How can we now turn our backs on science and reason and embrace a president who spouts nonsensical conspiracy theories?

Racism is, of course, a defining feature of the American experience, but so is fighting for racial justice. America is the land of W.E.B. Du Bois, Rosa Parks, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., John Lewis and other storied civil rights activists. Let their example inspire us today. How can we reward a president who employs bigotry for political advantage?