Barack Obama talks about the “idea of America” in his book and about not being ready to give up on it - and about the need of the world for the idea. I’ve been thinking about that. 1/

I don’t think there is any question that the United States has played an outsized role over the last 200+ years - from the very outset of the Republic, it has been an inspiration for the idea of self government (even if that idea was never perfectly realized). 2/

But ultimately the question it seems to me isn’t whether “idea of America” survives. 3/

Rather, the question & challenge for our age is whether it survives in America itself or comes to be better embodied elsewhere - just as the ideas of Greece & Rome came to take root & thrive & endure elsewhere. 4/

That’s the real question. Are we still committed to being America? And to be frank, 2020 hasn’t exactly been especially hopeful. 5/

Take, for example, one of the defining traits that people around the world have long associated with America - our pragmatism. That famed pragmatism has been woefully absent from much of the country’s response to COVID in 2020. 6/ https://twitter.com/mcpli/status/1248458882285834241

And you could argue that other places now are doing a better job at “being America” when it comes to making the sorts of investments in education and in science and research that once drove America to the top. 7/

To be clear, I don’t think it is too late. Great cultures are resilient - America not least among them. But I also think 2020 has shown that we are overdue for a really hard look at who we have become as a country. 8/

Because in some ways we more resemble an arrogant, declining Qing dynasty than the America of old. 9/