for the United States to implement
a modern electoral system,
to restore the legitimacy of the courts,
to reform its police forces,
to root out domestic terrorism,
to alter its tax code to address inequality,
to prepare its cities and its agriculture
for the effects of climate change,
to regulate and to control the mechanisms of violence.
All of these futures are possible.
There is one hope, however,
that must be rejected outright:
the hope that everything will work out by itself,
that America will bumble along into better times.
It won’t.
Americans have believed their country is an exception,
a necessary nation.
If history has shown us anything
it’s that the world doesn’t have any necessary nations.