America Is ...

America is Eli Wiesel, Ahmad Jamal, Jimmy Carter, and Barry Bonds. It is also a car full of teenagers, cigarettes dangling from their mouths, yelling obscenities at a man driving with his infant who happened to cut them off. It is a country that elected a black President. America is also the place where some polls had almost half of Republicans and twenty five percent of all Americans asserting that the black President was not really an American. It is a place with amazing diversity, and a diverse array of laws discriminating against immigrants. America is the land of amazing medical breakthroughs. It is also ranked 34th in infant mortality. America has been responsible for liberating peoples, and assassinating leaders. America can neither be summed up as the Great Satan or as the greatest country in the world. It is more than torture of suspected terrorists. It is more than the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. It is more than a flag or a soldier returning home from war to a motorcycle escort. It can’t be summed up in any sentence or by any event. You don’t have to like it that way. You don’t have to acknowledge that it is that way. But … it is that way. Always has been. Probably always will.