From time to time, I break out of the soccer mold and talk about other things happening in the world. I did it for John Prine. I did it for the protests in Minneapolis. And now, I’m doing it for John Lewis. Because John Lewis was absolutely among the best of us in this country.
And I also want to talk about this letter from Mitch McConnell.
It should be of note that Lewis and his career was marked by such a degree of the righteous pursuit of justice that not even someone who has revealed himself to be such a partisan ghoul like McConnell speaks ill of him in his passing. But I don’t want to talk too much about McConnell, and I don’t want to talk too much about how sincere or insincere this letter can be in light of the actual policy actions the Republican Party has taken under McConnell, or the voter suppression that has become commonplace under them, something which Lewis abhorred completely. I want to talk about this statement: “He put his life on the line to… bring our nation into greater alignment with its founding principles.”
I like that statement. The founding principles of the United States, devoid of their context, are good ones. But McConnell’s statement also reveals that those founding principles were never adhered to upon the nation’s founding. How could they be? The people who founded the country, the ones who set forth a Declaration of Independence that said “all men are created equal,” owned slaves. They held women as chattel. Many of them were rampant elitists. They set forth founding principles that they themselves were not keeping, by definition.
I still think those ideas were good ones. I still love the United States, because I have no other country to love. But John Lewis and his life reminds us that we still have far to go, that simply because we say all people are equal does not make it so. The arc of the moral universe may bend toward justice, but it will not bend by itself.
May we be blessed with Lewis’s toughness, his righteousness, his supreme impatience. May we seek out good trouble. And I hope, maybe, I get to speak to you one day, John. I’ll know you by the smirk, the one that looks like you already know you’ve won.
A Hearty Congrats to Leeds
Marcelo Bielsa and Leeds United have won the Championship, and Leeds will be back in the Premier League for the first time in over 15 years. I have nothing pithy to say here. Just think it’s cool.
Have a Good Weekend!
Make it a good weekend, like the one that will be enjoyed by the Portland Thorns and Houston Dash, and not the one that will be endured by my beloved Colorado Rapids, who steadily fell apart last night.