A Dream Deferred (or does it explode?)

The title, of course taken from that very wonderful, as well as prescient, Langston Hughes poem. Although I believe Hughes--and my interpretation is basic and standard--was speaking of the African American experience, I believe it is an apt metaphor for the development of American democracy.

All nations are predicated on a series of half-truths; thus this unsettling claim about the U.S. applies equally to all nations. What differentiates the U.S. from previous governments is the very lofty goals enshrined in our revolutionary rhetoric. We are a nation endowed with a prophecy--the prophecy of equality and freedom, which, it should be added, are inherently in tension. And it sometimes appears like a cruel joke for our Founders to have embedded these principles so deeply in our national psyche. Other times, however, we cannot be thankful enough that these principles exist for us so concretely. It provides the philosophical backdrop for our internal revolutions: our suffrage movements, our civil rights battles, the various currents that have racked American society.

During the hypernationalistic currents that have swept America time and time again, dissent is suppressed, contrarians are marginalized for crimes against a reified State, and rationality is seen as secondary to unity. We may be slowly winding ourselves out of of one such period.

The upside to this recurring situation is this: these periods are as temporal as they are visceral.

It does seem like a lifetime ago that the Bush administration decided to cross the invisible line of democratic ethics by engaging in a war of choice; what remains to be seen, however, is where the events of the last few years have pushed the American people. More important is where our politicians will be led. Our chains may be daisy-covered, but their wilt is palpable.