America's only been a stable, real democracy since the 1960s, with the passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts. The roots are shallow.

The idea that its survival is assured, that the political forces that fought democracy for so long are gone, was fanciful.

I've been thinking a lot lately about something about something @ProfCAnderson once told me:

“America is aspirational. That is part of what sets it apart. Marginalized people have used those aspirations to say, ‘This is what you say you are, but this is what you do.’ But what also happens is those aspirations get encoded as achievements."

We tell a teleological story about America in which one side won, and the other side lost, and those victories are sure and irreversible, because the arc of our history has direction. But it doesn't. The fight continues. The victories need to be constantly defended.