The final day: We are not going back

My friends: We are not going back.

We are not going back to the days where gay men and women had to live in fear.

We are not going back to the days when too many of us were, at best, second-class citizens.

We are not going back to the days of white, male domination.

We are done with them. Their day is past. They are yesterday's people. They have nothing to offer us in the 21st century, as we stand on the brink of amazing discoveries in science, discoveries which will change us categorically as a global civilization.

We refute and refuse their hate, their pathology, their diseased view of what it means to be a full human being. We cast anathema on them.

There are more of us than them. Whether we call ourselves Democrats, or Republicans, or none of the above. We want to live decent lives. We don't want to worry about the next irruption of animosity and hatred. We want to go on about our days, helping those we love, loving those we love, without the nattering nabobs of negativity telling us we're doing it wrong and that we must be chastised "for our own good".

¡Al infierno con ellos! ¡Que se joden!

We are in a war for the soul of this country. Nothing more, nothing less. We are in a war to shape who we will be as a species, as a culture. Will we wallow in rancor and resentment? Or will we embrace hope and possibilities?

As a student of history, I had thought that we were past the days of futile fascism. But we're not. It has always simmered, below the surface, waiting to bubble up again. Donald Trump is a symptom, not the cause. We must defeat not only him, but his entire blinkered ideology. I use "his" reservedly; if he thought he could have suckered Democrats, he would have done so. Republicans were more fertile ground. Of course, it doesn't matter if he believed all he has said at first; now he does. He has become his role. The persona is the person. If this at one point had been an act in the service of his ego, now it is who he is. He and all his minions must be defeated, and the work of Reconstruction finished. America needs to be denazified in a manner which Germany fully wasn't.

For what happens in America is not relegated to our borders. What happens here will affect world history. We have a grave responsibility not only to ourselves, but to those who look up to America, flawed as it is, as a beacon of hope. We are the final bastion against rank tyranny; if we fall, so falls the world.

Enemies around the world are salivating at our putative decline. But they have done so throughout our history, and their desires have been dashed time and again. Hideki Tojo and Adolf Hitler considered us weak, lost to pleasure, a "mongrel nation". Their delusions ended in Hiroshima and the desolation of our air campaign over Germany. That is a history which the likes of Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and Ali Khamenei should study. A sleeping giant is still a giant. And when he awakens, the world changes.

Tonight, Vice President Kamala Harris accepts the nomination of the Democratic Party for the presidency of the United States. Let us be resolute and put her behind the Resolute Desk. Let us leave it all on the field. As I always say, we have a world to save. And as Governor Tim Walz says, we can sleep when we're dead.

Let's fucking go.

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