Letter to Younger Americans

This piece was published on Daily Kos in late January, 2026.

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It would be good for America for young people to know enough history to recognize that what they’ve been witnessing represents a profound change from the country my generation — and part of the next — grew up in after World War II.

Younger Americans have lived their entire political lives amid an increasingly ugly politics — one in which a major party shows little interest in the public good and is, instead, focused solely on expanding its power. In the America they have known, money has captured much more of the government, lies have routinely defeated truth, and the American electorate has chosen to elevate to the presidency someone who’d already trampled on the law and tried to overthrow American democracy.

That is what the country has become.

But those generations that have come of age over the past thirty years deserve to know that there was a time, within living memory, when American politics functioned at least reasonably well — and when our democratic order did succeed, imperfectly but meaningfully, in creating one of the better societies human civilization has produced.

A great deal was always wrong, including some serious injustices. But to a meaningful degree, government did reflect the will of the people, the parties did often work together to advance shared values, those in power generally respected their constitutional oaths, and politics did not deal primarily in lies.

For all its defects, that America functioned well enough to make the United States, in many ways, the most successful nation in the world. The United States was well admired (though often with mixed feelings). And much of the “progress” of the world — toward prosperity, international order, and democracy — was the result of American leadership.

This nation still contains, available for public service, a great many people capable of representing this nation, and conducting America’s role on the world stage, in an admirable way.  (For example, President Biden’s exemplary rallying the Free World to help Ukraine resist the fascist aggressor).

Our standing has now been damaged for a generation at least. Our allies cannot unsee what they have seen this country become. But America could in time show a renewed reliability, as if this fascistic America is an aberration, when for a time a nation had a terrible breakdown.

I would like young people to be inspired by a vision of America as again an important voice for (at least much of) the Good. For all our faults, the champion of democracy against the alternative, which is tyranny.

Though we also abused our power in various ways, for the most part America stood for decency, and – overall — the way we played our role improved the world. One of the better hegemons in human history (like the way the U.S. helped Europe recover, while incubating Japan and Germany into decent democracies).

I would like young people feel a proper patriotic pride in important parts of the whole American story—what made it a magnet to people from all over the world.

If all young people have known in their times is the darkness that has increasingly come to dominate American politics ever since the first Bush, they’ll not likely envision and hope for something better.

But our history shows that something better is in our national DNA, and that can encourage us in our efforts to put the better forces back in charge, and to defeat the Force that’s driven us into this dark place, where a demented and vicious man is running amok in the nation and in the world.