Sunny Side Up - Turning Point to Second Reconstruction

My dear Friends --

June 18 was a day that will be marked as a turning point in America's embarkation upon a Second Reconstruction.  We are once again purposefully re-engaging in the Constitution's mandate to "form a more perfect union."  I know this because of what we saw in New York City and in Chicago -- and, yes, even in Versailles on Wednesday.

Let me start with Versailles.  It was anything but a heroic day for America as the President signed the memorandum of understanding purporting to end his war against Iran.  Indeed, it was a shameful, embarrassing, profligate surrender.  However, it wasn't the kind of surrender that opens the door to peace.  It was a surrender of attention, of interest, of involvement, of effort.  Trump said it himself.  The war was "boring."  He was tired of it.  He no longer wished to tolerate its vexation.  And so he asked for what amounted to an invoice for Iran's re-opening the Strait of Hormuz and for a 60-day conversation on the subject of Iran's uranium enrichment program.  It was expensive.  But it was acceptable because what Trump really expects to get is removal of the whole mess from public attention.  I doubt very much that any part of the MOU will be implemented, and I doubt he thinks it will be.  Iran will charge fees for transit through the Strait; Iran will continue its nuclear program; and there will be no $300 billion reconstruction program.  Effectively, Trump is leaving a much strengthened, much more formidable Iran to be dealt with by the next cadre of American leadership -- including his successor.  He is also leaving a diminished and forsaken American ally Israel to deal with its issues in the region more in isolation.

Where is the sun in all this?  Whatever diminution in stature the U.S. has suffered and whatever isolation Israel is now experiencing -- they are dwarfed by the self-imposed emasculation that will be Trump's fate for the remainder of his time -- in office and in life.  Of course, this is neither beneficial nor advantageous for the United States today.  It does, however, help frame the vision for our Second Reconstruction in the world.  In perhaps oversimplified terms, it is our rejoining the community of nations dedicated to the values we have pursued since our national birth.  Values which were highlighted and reaffirmed in both New York and Chicago yesterday.

New York.  I was there.  New York came together in celebration of the victory of one of its professional sports teams -- the New York Knicks.  It was a championship victory that hadn't happened for 53 years.  What it generated in the City was both inspiring and purgative.  I won't try to describe it, but will instead quote a few of the Mayor's words just below and will cite you to a fuller description that appeared in Professor Richardson's Letters from an American today:

Over these past weeks, as the Knicks kept winning, our city has come together as one. Neighbors invited neighbors over. Strangers high fived one another in the street. Subway conductors sang their announcements and bus drivers danced behind the wheel. So often, when this city comes together, it is because we are forced to by a moment of tragedy or adversity. 
What a gift it is to be brought together by pure, unfiltered joy. For as long as we live, we will remember this feeling of a city together, a city alive, a city overcome by happiness. But let's not pretend that this was inevitable. If you will allow me, I want to travel back in time eight days. Game 4. Nine minutes and 33 seconds left in the fourth quarter. The Knicks are down 20. The analytics guys, the sports betting companies, the pundits who watch from far away do what they do. They run the numbers. They calculate the odds. They write the Knicks off. 


Whatever else we do, we are not going to write off the America built over 250 years of endeavor.  We are going to keep up the search and the effort.

In Chicago -- specifically the South Side of Chicago -- there was a different sort of celebration.  It was a gathering to recognize and celebrate the opening of President Obama's Presidential Center -- a learning center dedicated to educating all who accept the opportunity about both his presidency and especially the stories of the American people.  The American people who are the strength and sinew of our pursuit of a more perfect union.  As President Obama observed in his speech yesterday:
And since we’re a few weeks away from America’s 250th birthday, it is worth remembering just how radical the whole idea of self-government really was back in 1776. To that point, human history was a tale of conquest and caste and rigid hierarchies, a world where the strong dominated the weak, where power and wealth and status flowed through lineage and the many were ruled by the few.
But out of the fire and steel of a revolution, a different story took flight on this continent, a declaration that we are all created equal, endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights, and that in the newly independent United States, there will be no kings or lords, no serfs or subjects, but only citizens, each of us free to pursue our own version of happiness, and able to determine our collective faith through an elected representative government.It had not been done. And because it hadn’t been done before, the success of this experiment was never a given. In forming our union, the founders fell terribly short of the Declaration’s promise, leaving slavery intact, allowing states to restrict the franchise to white men who owned property, but in drafting a Constitution and a Bill of Rights, they did have the foresight, the genius to provide us with a framework that allows each generation to make our union more perfect.
And over more than two centuries, through petitions and protests, marches and strikes, moral appeals from the pulpit and conversations at the family dinner table, men and women from all walks of life of every color, every faith, every region took up the cause of democracy and made it their own, until “We the people” came to include not just some of us, but all of us.


Again, I cite you to Professor Richardson's entire post, which offers a portrait of the day in Chicago and what it may mean for our future -- apart from its celebration of leadership in recent history.

Of course, we have a distance to travel and much work to be done, but surely yesterday gives us confidence that we are on the path and that we are justified in believing that "Yes, we can!"  At the same time, as Mayor Mamdani observed in retrospect "But let's not pretend that this was inevitable."   Our Second Reconstruction is not inevitable, but it is surely on the horizon and it surely can be accomplished.  Yes, we can.

Sunny Side Up.

Mike