Three Speeches in Three Days
Carney, Trump, Springsteen + my thoughts on what it means to be American
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AMERICA WAS NEVER PERFECT. But the promise of its constitution to seek “a more perfect union” gave us the hope that those in charge would at least keep trying to improve the lives of the American people.
A year into the second presidency of Donald J. Trump, it’s only the billionaires whose lives he’s improving. Many of us knew within days after he took over how bad things were going to be, and like so many others, I warned Trump voters in the starkest possible terms 48 hours before the election. And I asked a simple question:
Would you let him have lunch with your daughter or sister or wife or mother? Then why would you let him have our lunch (and so much more) for four more years?
So here we are. It’s hard to glance at the news without recoiling in disgust, even as a third of the country revels in ICE agents terrorizing our neighborhoods. We now have the cold-blooded shooting of Alex Pretti yesterday in Minneapolis to go with the killing of Renee Good 18 days earlier and the immigrant-detention deaths of 34 since the start of Trump 47.
I’ve been thinking nonstop about three speeches delivered in three days last week — by Bruce Springsteen in New Jersey; by Canadian PM Mark Carney and Trump in Davos. Together, they point a way forward.
What it means to “be American” is a topic older than the republic, and that debate has played out in deadly, often shameful ways over our two-and-a-half centuries. The MAGA years have thrust this existential-yet-fundamental question upon us again, with extreme prejudice, and at scale.
The one thing I don’t want to do right now is debate America’s troubled and violent history and its potential future. Instead, this might be our chance to exhume solidarity from the ash heap, band together and overpower those working hard to erase the progress we’ve made over the past century.
Think what you will about the “American Empire,” but we can all agree it’s crazy to see people actively campaign and win elections on an agenda that, if enacted, absolutely means the end of that empire. It is an agenda that hinges on exploiting any conceivable fissure between communities. It is overtly race-based, but religion and economic issues are major components.
The proof is honestly overwhelming. Scroll through our archive and have a look.
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This is not the America I want to live in, and it has become plainly that many tens of millions of people across the country feel the same. So, this is what I think it means to be American right now. It means being willing to cast aside your priors, and those of your neighbors, and stand up for each other. Protect each other. Be American and seize this opportunity.
I liked how Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the American Immigration Council put it on Bluesky:
Like, no duh, the United States has done some incredibly awful stuff over the centuries. But we also have a very powerful strand of humanitarianism, especially in the post World War II era, and I will damn well lean into that part of our national identity.
The space between what America is, and who Americans are, can be quite vast, but the gap has never been this wide in my lifetime.
The vision of what America is was on full display in Davos when Trump meandered and rambled on for over an hour about his list of grievances. I encourage you to watch it in its entirety. Don’t watch the highlights and lowlights and commentary, just watch it for yourself.
This is how we are being represented abroad.
Susan Glasser pulls no punches in her New Yorker piece about Trump’s logorrhea:
Trump reveals just about everything one could ever want to know about him—his lack of discipline, his ignorance, his vanity, insecurity, and crudeness, and a mean streak that knows no limits.
Canadian PM Mark Carney’s speech went viral for other reasons: It was calm, cool, collected and put the world on notice. Again, take the time and watch the entire thing.
This passage is as good of an overview of global geopolitics as you’ll find anywhere:
American hegemony, in particular, helped provide public goods: open sea lanes, a stable financial system, collective security, and support for frameworks for resolving disputes. So, we placed the sign in the window. We participated in the rituals. And largely avoided calling out the gaps between rhetoric and reality.
This bargain no longer works. Let me be direct: we are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition. Over the past two decades, a series of crises in finance, health, energy, and geopolitics laid bare the risks of extreme global integration.
More recently, great powers began using economic integration as weapons. Tariffs as leverage. Financial infrastructure as coercion. Supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited. You cannot “live within the lie” of mutual benefit through integration when integration becomes the source of your subordination.
The multilateral institutions on which middle powers relied — the WTO, the UN, the COP — the architecture of collective problem solving — are greatly diminished.
As a result, many countries are drawing the same conclusions. They must develop greater strategic autonomy: in energy, food, critical minerals, in finance, and supply chains.
What does it mean to be American? It means not wanting your closest allies to describe my country’s behavior like this, let alone to be absolutely correct in the assessment. Maybe this is “foreign policy stuff” that you don’t follow, or have been told a million times does not affect American elections. The domestic implications of the MAGA agenda—the unpopular MAGA agenda—are dire.
BTW, according to Washington Post columnist Ishaan Tharoor, at least one Davosian (Davonista? anyone know? anyone care?) was more hopeful. He quotes Nigerian trade minister Jumoke Oduwole:
The third speech was given on Jan. 17 at the Light of Day Foundation’s gala, where Springsteen was a surprise performer. My friend Dan Forman, the biggest Springsteen fan I know, pointed me to “an ode to American possibility.”
An ode that Springsteen had to dedicate to a woman murdered by her own government. That juxtaposition is almost haunting.
What he said, with timestamps, before singing “Promised Land”:
“This next song is probably one of my greatest songs and... I don’t want to be out of order tonight, but I wrote this song as an ode to American possibility. It was to both this beautiful but flawed country that we are, and to the country that we could be.
Now, right now, we are living through incredibly critical times. The United States—the ideals and the values for which it’s stood for the past 250 years—is being tested as it has never been in modern times [01:03]. Now, those values and those ideals have never been as endangered as they are right now.
So as we gather tonight in this beautiful display of love and care and thoughtfulness and community, if you believe in democracy, in liberty, if you believe that truth still matters [01:31], and that it’s worth speaking out, and that it’s worth fighting for...
If you believe in the power of the law and that no one stands above it [01:55]. If you stand against heavily armed, masked federal troops invading an American city and using Gestapo tactics against our fellow citizens. If you believe you don’t deserve to be murdered for exercising your American right to protest [02:18] and send a message to this president... and as the mayor of that city has said, ICE should get the f*** out of Minneapolis.
And this song is for you, and in the memory of a mother of three and American citizen, Renee Good. Thank you. My friend Jimmy Resnick, come on in and sing with us.” [02:43]
What does it mean to be an American? Right now, in this moment, it means standing up for your neighbors, the kids at school, the family across town living in so much fear they can’t go to the grocery store. The outpouring in every city the federal government has invaded over the past year (Washington, D.C.; Chicago; Memphis; Portland; Charlotte; New Orleans) has been swift, caring, and robust—people helping people.
In Minnesota, the community networks that have been built over the past month will be written about for years to come. This is what it means to be an American.
Day-to-day life, for so many people, is all about survival. Paycheck-to-paycheck has become the norm. The thing is, this was before the federal government invaded the Twin Cities. Before national guard deployments, before Trump’s reelection, before Joe Biden, before George Floyd… This is what it means to be an American.
Now, we have a very unique opportunity to push these dark forces back and change what “normal” means in “back to normal.” As we saw in the aftermath of Trump’s rants in Davos about Greenland specifically and Europe generally, when (most of) Europe and Canada banded together, Trump caved. We have our oldest allies, and in the case of France, arguably our most important historical ally, lecturing us about what America can be in the world. We have tech overlords essentially buying their way into government in ways that would seem outlandish in a Marvel comic book.
In so many ways, this is also what it means to be American.
Elliot Payne, President of the Minneapolis City Council, has been posting these short video updates that are concise, to-the-point, and as inspiring as they are disheartening.
Engaged local public officials, truth-seeking local media outlets, a community organized and determined in opposition—this is what it means to be an American.
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