As critical as I've been on this forum of American policies and culture, there is a lot of good in this country too. When we go, the world will miss us, there are a lot worse actors out there than us, and there have been many worse ones in the past.

No, we're not perfect, but neither are we monsters, and in spite of all the evil we've done, we've done much good as well. And most important, over the years we have improved, we've actually gotten better.

And that's exactly why I am so concerned and so angry now. There are forces in this country who are trying to push us back to that ugly past we have struggled so hard to climb out of. That's
what the forces of reaction are trying to do, not "Make America Great Again". They want us to go back to the Gilded Age, or Jim Crow, or even the ante-bellum South. They want to resurrect the evils of racism, nationalism, militarism and religious fanaticism.

What I fear is not that history will remember us as evil, but that we threw away a fighting chance of being truly good. Like the ancient Greeks and Romans and the British Empire, we will leave a brilliant legacy. But like them, I fear we will also fail to achieve the true greatness that was within us and that we were capable of.

Sad.