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The Idea of America
America is an idea struggling to free itself from slavery and the many degradations that slavery entails: conquest, genocide, racism, classism, sexism, exploitation imposed by fear of starvation, and regimentation into legions of thuggish enforcers and cannon fodder used as pawns for self aggrandizement by the kings, queens, bishops, executioners, and judges of the social order.
There is rebellion trembling in the souls of the people, looking up to the fabled blue sky of their dreams from the dank dark depths of their wells of desperation; and looking out with bleary eyes to the hazy lost horizons for unrealized promises, from the burnt lands and baking deserts of their isolated naked vulnerability.
What do you do when you fall far from help? You sit waiting until you can get up, and then you go on. On!
Those that survive to do this embody the earth tremors of the idea of America struggling to erupt into freedom ruled by justice, fortified by intelligence, ennobled by compassion; an eruption that will inevitably require a crisis that may unleash tragic cruelties because the unyielding resistance against the pressure for social change — by the slaveowners, the speculators, the profiteers — could only be broken by a terrible and searing explosive force.
The idea of America will find its lasting peaceful freedom in solidarity by the resurrection of America in the aftermath of its last death in its last civil war. Who can know if they will live to see this? All that we can know is that the idea is undying.
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manuelgarciajr 
This isn’t journalism, nor a rant. You can think of it as poetry if you like, but it’s clear enough. It is what I think is true and enduring.
16 August 2021 marks the failure in America to learn the lesson of 30 April 1975.
So I survived to live through it twice now, but I wonder how many more can be sustained.
Stan Goff (18 August 2021):
To my comrades from 2001-6 (before I hit terminal burnout):
I sound embattled now (in defense of the end of this war) and maybe a bit obsessive at this moment . . . but you all remember how hard we fought, and how hard the setbacks, when we opposed the GWOT early and often. I am sooooo grateful that this is over . . . I don’t know if we “prevailed,” but one thing we won’t be ashamed of is that we, esp the old heads who were vets, made it safer for other people to change their minds and see this obscenity for what it was. In fact, I need to say this to everyone who worked against this. We didn’t do it right all the time, and we may not have been “effective’ by most metrics, but we did what we knew to be right. A friend wrote, “There should be church bells tolling,” and, of course, they’re not. We are still ruled over by con artists and cowards; but for us . . . listen up . . . there are church bells tolling. “It is accomplished.”
ht George.
MG,Jr. response:
I hit terminal burnout on 9 November 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell, the Cold War ended (or so it seemed), and I heard church bells ringing through my tears because I thought I had been released from my deal with the devil: working on nuclear bombs to make a living. After that (>1993) I learned to persevere in my soul past the Waiting for Godot.
This is what Stan Goff was referring to:
https://stangoff.medium.com/in-praise-of-joe-biden-95b11a5ae828
The idea of America will never be realized as long as it is wedded to capitalism which is inimical to freedom and democracy. The titans of economic tyranny have brainwashed us with pie in the sky propaganda that wealth will trickle down to us. We are screwed.