Finding meaning in words of 2 leaders

“Well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead.”

“But what we know — what we have seen — is that America can change.” year’s rallies who cursed Islam, “beaners,” “f--s,” “that n-----,” Barack Obama, and “that b----” Hillary Clinton, the ones who raised a Nazi salute and cried, “Sieg Heil!”

And I’m thinking of a woman I wrote about recently. She responded on Twitter to a mother who asked what the GOP health care bill would mean for her son, a preemie with a heart defect.

“Sorry about your son,” the woman sniffed, “but what would he have done 200 years ago? ... Nothing is promised to anyone.” Who says something like that? I don’t know these people. I don’t want to. There is nothing in them that makes me want to “come together” and “heal.” No, I just want to rebuke and defeat. So perhaps, in some sense, secession has already occurred.

What, then, is the case for America on the week of its birthday? What is the argument for our country in this crossroads moment when it has abandoned world leadership, international obligations, founding principles, and human compassion?

I suppose that question explains why I find such meaning in the juxtaposed words of King and Obama. The preacher speaks to the ominous uncertainty I feel: “We’ve got some difficult days ahead.”

But the senator who would become president speaks to the one virtue that still inspires: “America can change.”

So it can. And relatively easily at that. For Russia, Cuba, North Korea or China to change would require a coup, blood running in the streets. We, on the other hand, can transfigure a nation through the simple expedient of a ballot. America is a state of constant reinvention.

Which is reason to hope this secession is not the end of the story, reason to hope we can return this country to some semblance of itself. Reason to hope, but no guarantee. All we have is a fighting chance.

But America has never needed more than that.