Listen back, one more time, to the rhythm of change on our political horizon. Somewhere below our fields of conflict, the engines of our social and political evolution trudge closer. Maybe it sounds like chaos, but they can be heard better every day.
Polarization is natural. Even climate change bears down on our deepest anxieties; for many of us the question leads immediately to our very survival. Our world will change, indisputably, and its form beyond the horizon is unclear. Have no doubt that the magnitude of our future requires an equal magnitude of response, a magnitude scarcely possible without uniting on a singular front.
But I urge you to ignore suggestions of Armageddon. What we all hear is once again the approaching rhythm of the common good, when finally the next centennial steps for America’s next great chapter are building focus.
Forays into our future will test us. They may look ugly, perhaps even confused. No one has exactly the right answer save for the courage to make a change. Climate change is not an easy question. And its answers may feel impossible. The dilemma finds itself embedded in almost all aspects of human life. But our generations before repeatedly persevered through a violently transforming world with the firm insistence that humanity endure. The inheritance has passed. We are the stewards now, and we will persevere just the same.
Not much is more American than self-determination, the unyielding conviction that affirmative action embarks from within — even without permission. The world may not all look the same in the end. Not entirely as we knew it but not entirely strange either. But it will be better, and as we’ve been told, “better is good.”