We will build it forward

We will not build it back. Not to what it was. That was never good enough. What it was was a brochure and promise made to some and promised but withheld from others and selectively enforced and celebrated universally and the distance between the brochure and the real heartbreaking lived experience was always the con-man’s tell, was always the bruised and bleeding wound, was always the thing we refused to look at when we pledged allegiance hand on heart with eyes on a flag that flew over slave markets.

So, no. Not back to then. But forward to a better future. Toward the thing we said we were but have never been. Toward the brochure. Toward the lying vision you sold in civics class and that too many were too comfortable to disbelieve, but brave enough still to take seriously, and if that makes us suckers or marks then so be it. We are suckers. We are marks who will persist and build the things we were promised. We will build forward for the people you never built it for.

For the ones who were here before you “discovered” and who were not consulted or included. For the ones who were brought here in chains and were not included. For the ones who built the roads and tilled the fields and laid the railways and built the wealth and who were told that the building was not for them. For the ones whom you tell every day to go back to a country they have never seen, by people whose own grandparents came here on a boat.

We will build it forward and we will build it right this time, which means building it for everyone, which means admitting it was never, ever, ever for everyone before, which is the part that makes you lose your minds because your myth is load-bearing deception and the myth is a lie and the building has been standing on a cracked foundation since 1619 and you cannot fix the roof until you dig out the skeletons in the basement and bury them with honor and regret.

Every stone you threw we will lay again. Every wall you gutted we will replaster. Every bridge you burned we will build again. Every door you closed we will open again. And the traffic will flow and the rivers will flow and the people will flow and time will flow and we will blot out your names until they fade into the distance of the unloved of history.

We will build forward the schools and the libraries and fill them with the books you banned and the teachers you muzzled and the curricula you bleached and whitewashed to erase the truth of the histories that make you feel shame and discomfort for your part in them.

We will build forward the hospitals and the clinics and the labs and bring back the scientists and the doctors you fired and attacked and the research you killed and the vaccines you politicized and the public health infrastructures you dismantled because drug-addled morons who think the measles builds character told you to.

We will build forward the courts and take back and rewrite the law and clean out the courts like Hercules in the Augean. We will build forward equality under the law without favor or privilege, for every human being, the boring, ordinary, unglamorous Rule of Law that scares you and that you treated like an optional inconvenience instead of the foundations of the nation.

We will build forward the borders. Not as walls or as cages but as doors that welcome in the tired and poor and huddled masses yearning to break free. We will build forward the gateway at the feet of the New Colossus and live up to the truth of the lies you sold.

We will build forward the agencies and the offices and the phone lines and the people who answer them. The VA, and the Social Security office, and the EPA, and CDC, and NOAA, and the FDA, and every dull and vital acronym you gutted because a ketamine-addled sociopath told you they were inefficient and gutted them while spreading memes and glorifying Nazis.

We will build forward the alliances and the treaties and the friendships and the relationships you gutted because your stupid diapered dotard listens to the flattery of dictators and sycophants who pretend he is strong and manipulate his fragile, short-fingered, pyrite-plated, and vulgar ego.

We will build forward the air and the water and the soil and the regulations that weren’t enough but were too burdensome and unnecessary from your perspective. We will build forward rivers that run clean and children who can breathe and we will give you nothing but the reviling you so richly deserve.

We will build forward the right to speak and the right to march and the right to dissent and the right to exist and the right to hold power accountable whether you are Black, or Brown, or Gay, or Trans, or Muslim, or Jewish, or Buddhist, or poor, or just simply inconvenient.

We will build forward the right to vote and the right for that vote to matter and the right to be represented by people who look and think and feel and care like you. We will build forward the right for the person we elected to take office without mobs storming the building because a thin-skinned man in a terrible combover and a shit-filled diaper told them that math was fake news to protect his ego from admitting his loss.

We will build it forward. Nail by nail. Brick by brick. Law by law. Conviction by conviction, and vote by vote, and day by day, and hand in hand.

And yes. It will not be easy and it will not be fast and it will not be clean and we will fuck some shit up and have to fix it and that is called democracy and it is messy and ugly and slow but it is a million times better than the shit we have to live through with you and your vulgarities and it is the only way to build forward and care about the person at the bottom of the pile. To care about your Jesus’ “the least of us.”

And when you say “make America great again” we will say that America has never been great, not fully, not for everyone, not yet, and we will tell you that not as a criticism but as a dare. Not “make America great again” but instead, Make America Great At Last. At long, long last.

Because even your racist, enslaving, hypocritical founders knew. They dared too. The dare they encoded into their foundational words was “more perfect” instead of perfect. Because for all their faults they knew that the project was not finished and will never be finished and that the act of finishing is the work and that work is the nation.

So we will build it forward. The boring way. The ordinary way. The way it works when it works. Clean water from the tap. Mail in the mailbox. Healthcare for all. Bridges that stay up. Ambulances that show up. Teachers who teach truth. Judges who follow the law without favor. The woman who answers the phone and helps a stranger and does it again and again and never trends and never goes viral despite the fact that the Republic rests on her back and the backs of us all. And those backs do not break.

We will build it forward.

Better than it was.

Closer to the promise.

Further from the lie.

Until the lie is so far we can no longer see it from here.

We will build it.

Forward.