Francisco Doa has a thoughtful piece at PandoDaily, which generally covers tech and startups in Silicon Valley, on how we as a country need to forget the exceptionalism stuff and get on with building something useful and important instead. This is a really excellent idea and it also sums up the attitude of many tech entrepreneurs. Git ‘er done. And there’s always more to do.
Whatever your political leanings, I propose this singular idea. Stop believing America is an exceptional entity. We are a story still being constructed with both good and bad. We are, like everyone else in this world we share, people fraught with imperfections. And as a result, this construct, our nation, reflects our weaknesses as well as our strengths. As we should teach our children, we are judged not by words or rhetoric, but by our actions alone.
All of us will continue to be part of the same grand experiment, the same unfinished story. It is a story that we all must write together and the ending of which is still very much in doubt.
The important thing here is the We. We the populace comprise a country that currently is seriously divided. Only We can put it back together again. Will We?