When I write, or when I express my political beliefs, I feel there’s some need to intellectualize those feelings into well-constructed and rendered thought. To give the appearance that these beliefs were arrived at through careful consideration instead of through emotion and instinct. When examining specific policy details this can be true. For instance, here in LA I’ve decided I support option 4 of the Sepulveda Transit Corridor Project. I read the briefings and decided that option 4 aligned the most with my core values. Those core values though, I concede, are not the result of careful consideration. They are something primeval within myself. The primordial ooze from which my political life has sprung forth.
From the ages of 5 to 9 I attended school at Cooper Elementary in Burlington, Wisconsin. Every day, we would begin with the main office doing the morning announcements. This is nothing extraordinary. The morning announcements ended with the Pledge of Allegiance. Again, this is commonplace in most American schools. Yet, one day in the 1st or 2nd grade, I stopped saying it. First, to test the waters, I would mumble or omit parts. The first part I remember purposely butchering was the end: “one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice at all.”
You see, I had this youthful scorn towards religion, specifically Christianity. Faith wasn’t something I had in spades as a kid. Like, I don’t have any memories of earnestly believing in Santa Claus. I’m sure I did at some point, but by the time I was like six I thought it over and it didn’t make sense to me. I understood little about the world, but I understood enough to know that a man couldn’t deliver presents to the world in a single night. It didn’t make sense. If I was unable to summon faith for man whose name was on the presents under my tree every December 25th, you can imagine my skepticism towards the man responsible for something intangible like my eternal soul. Jesus turning water to wine or walking on water was fine for a story, but I didn’t believe in it. In fact, I quite resented having to wake up early to go sit in this room that was too hot and listen to a man talk about things I didn’t care about. Even the promise of doughnut holes at the end wasn’t enough to garner my interest in the whole situation.
All this to say, I suddenly was very wary of this God guy being in the pledge of allegiance. It felt wrong so I stopped saying “under God.” I think it was the first political decision I ever made. Hardly a big one. Hardly an important one, but it is unquestionably the seed from my present beliefs about the importance of the separation of church and state have flowered.
Once one part of the pledge was up for debate, suddenly the whole thing seemed pretty suspect to me. Why was I pledging allegiance every day? What was the point of this ritual? If this was a land of freedom for all, shouldn’t I have the freedom to not say these words? The words started to taste like coercion as they passed through my mouth, so I stopped saying them. I don’t think I could have explained my actions at the time, not in any way that was coherent, but I felt strongly enough about them that a goody-two-shoes like me was willing to break a school rule.
I think it’s impossible to separate this from the context in which I was coming of age. It was the early aughts; the height of the post 9/11 panic. It was the time of the Patriot Act and the creation of the surveillance state. Islamophobia was on the rise hand-in-hand with a incredibly jingoistic strain of patriotism. I don’t think a 7-year-old Abe could have articulated any of that beyond the general situation of what had happened on 9/11. Still, somehow, probably in part due to my mother, I remember growing up being intensely distrustful of the actions of the government even if I didn’t fully understand what they were doing. I felt a sense of revulsion towards the politics of the time.
I think this is because I, outside of logic and reason, have an emotional and visceral devotion to freedom, justice, and equality. Sure I can intellectualize my feelings now and give reasons, but that’s not what drives me. Fundamentally, I don’t oppose the slaughter of the Palestinian people because I believe it is in violation of the UN’s Genocide Convention, I oppose it because I feel sick thinking of the wanton loss of human life and how the taxes taken from every paycheck I make goes to building the bombs that kill them. I don’t oppose ICE raids because I think they are a violation of immigration law, I oppose them because I believe citizens and non-citizens alike are equally entitled to our basic rights and shouldn’t be subjected to such cruelties. I don’t oppose Donald Trump because he’s violating governmental statutes, I oppose him because he’s a fascistic tyrant.
Growing up I was led to believe that this inclination towards distrust in the government and its traditions and customs was anti-American. Now, I think I was profoundly mistaken to accept that framing. We, the people, are not defined by some shared cultural heritage, ethnic identity, or religious devotion. We are defined by revolution. We looked at the tyrannical government of George III and decided to fight back, but that fight didn’t end in 1789 when we signed the constitution. We didn’t excise tyranny when we split from England. The tyranny continued, just more directed towards the margins of society, the less powerful. Tyranny directed towards Black Americans, women, queer people, the poor and working class, and whatever ethnicities had and have yet to be assimilated into whiteness.
Until recently, I believed it was possible to reform this tyranny out of our system. That with enough work and enough effort we could build an America that lived up to the lofty ideal that all people are created equal. I no longer believe this is the case. This American experiment has failed. Our legislature is full of feckless cowards on the left and sycophantic ghouls on the right. Our judiciary seems to have a single minded focus on giving the powerful in our society the ability to trample on the weak. Our executive is ruling as a king instead of as a president.
In the spirit of the Fourth of July I looked back at the Declaration of Independence. If you haven’t revisited it in some time, you may have forgotten that the majority of it is a long list of grievances against George III. Trump and our government at large are guilty of many of these.
“Excit[ing] domestic insurrections amongst us”
“Transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences”
“Depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury”
“Cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world”
“Obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither”
“Erect[ing] a multitude of New Offices, and sen[ding] hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people”
“[keeping] among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures”
So, what do we do about it? I think we have two real options. First, a new constitution. One with more safeguards and one that doesn’t encourage dysfunction and corruption. As an exercise I wrote the first part of one some time ago and have been working on the second part. It’d be interesting to see people with more political and cultural cache take up a similar initiative. Two, we divide the states. Probably not into fifty different countries, but into some number of distinct units where there is less internal disagreement. I only fear the cost of such actions. I worry about bloodshed. Not many changes in government are without their human costs. It feels less drastic though when the cost of continuing down the path we are on is as great and terrible as it has become.
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe in 2026 the Democrats wake up, or some critical mass of them will be beaten in their primaries by people who are willing to do the bold change it would take to save our nation. I see some hope in figures like Zohran Mamdani emerging in this moment and winning elections. More figures seem to be emerging in that mold too, but fixing this country is a herculean task to bear. My feelings don’t believe we can fix this system. I hope that I’m wrong.
It is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish [the government], and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
-The Declaration of Independence (7/4/1776)