The State of Our Union From the Eyes of a College Student

For centuries, the brightest thinkers among us have sought to devise the perfect form of government. And for centuries, they have failed. The unfortunate reality is that there is no government that places power squarely in the hands of the people.

But our American democracy is one that has come closest to the liberal ideals first put forth in those brilliant documents of the Enlightenment some 400 years ago. From its founding to now, this nation has embraced the idea that no man shall live under the subjugation of another, and that each individual is entitled to their own set of unalienable rights. Yes, we have failed to live up to those ideals. Yes, we have also wavered in our commitment to those ideals abroad. But time and time again, we are reminded that the United States is indeed the greatest nation on Earth.

The shining beacon on the hill - it's an enduring image that has defined the promise of America since its inception. The notion that every person has a chance to lead a decent life regardless of who they are, given they subscribe to the principles of the republic, is what has pulled so many hopeful migrants from distant shores to this land of the free. It's what drove my father to abandon everything he knew and take his family 7,000 miles across oceans so that his son could receive the best education from the greatest institutions in the world.

But this election has shown that the once axiomatic declaration of America's greatness has been reduced to a mere claim, one subject to interpretation and dispute. We are no longer the land of Abraham Lincoln and his emancipation proclamation, or the land of Jane Addams and her settlement houses, or the land of Martin Luther King Jr. and his nonviolent protests. What Walt Whitman once described as the "composite nation, form’d from all, with room for all." is now the nation divided between "us,” the “real Americans” and "them," the “dog eaters” and “job stealers”. It seems we would rather embrace a politics of exclusion and resentment rather than of change and progress.

A housing shortage. Deindustrialization and growing economic inequality. Women's rights under threat. Two hot wars raging in the Middle East and Europe. An increasingly hostile rivalry with a nation of 1.4 billion people who hold diametrically opposed views to us. Dwindling trust between our closest international allies. These are just a handful of the pressing challenges that our next president will face. Yet we have chosen someone who, according to the most learned among us, is unfit to lead on any of these issues.

While my faith in America has been diminished, it is not vanquished. I refuse to fall victim to the dangerous temptation of presentism. I still believe that there is light at the end of this political darkness. Four years will show once more the incapacity of Donald Trump to uphold the principles of the Constitution, and in 2028 we will have another chance to reshape ourselves in the image of our founding ideals.