A Search for My Country:

Understanding and Responding to the last 8 years

“Where, after all, do universal rights begin? In small places, close to home — so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person; the neighborhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm or office where he works. Such are the places where every man, woman, and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere. Without concerned citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world.”

–Eleanor Roosevelt, “The Great Question,” remarks delivered at the United Nations in New York on March 27, 1958.

This is a prologue to a collection of my attempt (the meaning of “essay”) to understand and respond to the crisis of faith in democracy in America and the world.

The past four years in which Donald Trump dominated the narrative of the identity of America have been the most culminating era for the search for my own identity. And I am thankful to many others from many points of view who have helped me in my understanding and response. I compare our situation to the German people’s attempt after the demise of Hitler to understand who they are and want to be as a nation. And the Russian people after Stalin, Bresnev, and the demise of the Soviet Union. I think of Augustine reflecting on the fracturing and fall of the Roman Empire. America, who am I nourished by you. And who are the WE, the People, who constitute you.

During the past four years I pondered how a man who had no soul, who saw himself as the center of the universe, who dealt with people as winners and losers by whether they were with or against him, who treated others as aliens less than human, whose measure of success was pecuniary wealth and the control of force, could attract so many followers, take over the Republican Party and lead an insurrection against our democracy.

I am an amateur but serious transmodernist philosopher by educational persuasion, a catholic (universalist) by religious persuasion, a community organizer towards democracy in local communities, neighborhoods, churches, cities, and regions by political persuasion. And I am a writer. Flannery O’Conner when asked why she writes answered “to see what I am thinking about.” I like that, but I write mostly to think. Writing helps me finish my thoughts and then criticize them. And then start all over again. But primarily I am an organizer. I think in order to develop a strategy for democratic action and power.

What I have gathered here with hopefully some coherence and consistency, are observations and conclusions that I have gained by talking with ordinary people in the local communities and with other researchers and writers who are pursuing the same questions that I am pursuing.