The triumph of liberalism is not inevitable. It can fail. And then, if we are bold, unrelenting, and lucky, it can be won back.
Maybe this knowledge—stripping America bare of her pieties—can make us less fatalistic and more eager to fight.
Because to struggle is to live.
Another text to same friend:
there's a theory about america, i'm not saying it's the consensus but it has been out there for some time, that this very peculiar nation needs a great bloodletting at times before it jerks itself into the next iteration, like the civil war, 80 yrs after founding. we're overdue by this theory, unless we count the '60's, and maybe we should. real violence, a quasi-civil war. god bless me, if it happens soon i'm already in my '70's, i won't be of much use, but i'll do my part if it comes to that. i don't even own a gun but i goddamn will if, as lincoln said in his second inaugural, "and the war came." it's just a theory but it feels a little like a great fit of violent vomiting may, i don't say will, come. i just don't think anyone much thinks we can go on like this indefinitely. the stress has already fractured institutions and norms. will it break people out of "comfortable numbness", or haven't we that much "virtue", and that much "fight" left? maybe we're gonna find out, idk.
