Achieving our country

Another long day ahead, a day when class goes well past the dinner bell and I get to meet again with the evening MALA students. But it won't be as long a day as the new Supreme Court justice-in-waiting has had to endure.

I wasn't planning to tune in to Day Two of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson's confirmation hearing, there are too many demagogues and transparently-racist vulgarians posturing and preening and trying to bring her down. Too many Ted Cruzes and Lindsey Grahams and Josh Hawleys and Tom Cottons and Marsha Blackburns. I finally turned on the captions and turned off the sound, so I'd know when it was safe to listen again.

There were just enough Cory Bookers yesterday. 

Don't ever let anyone steal your joy, your righteous pride in the perseverance of those who've overcome long odds to succeed in a society still not the promised land but, thanks to the patient labors and talents of people like Judge Jackson, is inching a bit closer.

There was a nice moment, too, when the Judge spoke of her early disillusionment as a freshman at Harvard, and the moment when a sympathetic stranger's words of encouragement meant everything. Such a contrast to the pygmy Senators who defile their office by trying (and this time failing, I am confident) to smear and defeat a great jurist and block another milestone on the road to (as we'll discuss in our "Good Citizen" class this evening) achieving our country. 

“But you cannot urge national political renewal on the basis of descriptions of fact. You have to describe the country in terms of what you passionately hope it will become, as well as in the terms of what you know it to be now. You have to be loyal to a dream country rather than to the one to which you wake up every morning. Unless such loyalty exists, the ideal has no chance of becoming actual.”

Richard Rorty would be pleased, when Judge Jackson succeeds we're all a long stride closer to becoming a land that actually lives up to the language of its creed. Liberty and justice for all.