Why I will never give up on this country -- an email from NYT correspondent Frank Bruni (July 29, 2020)

Patrick Semansky/Associated Press

By Frank Bruni Opinion Columnist

Almost anywhere in America that you look, you see strivers who weren’t born here and didn’t have roots here but made the decision to come here anyway, and that wasn’t some whim. That wasn’t some fluke. They came because they had taken the measure of this messy planet and determined that our patch of earth held more opportunity than any other — that it was their best bet.

They work in your go-to restaurant. They operate the dry cleaner that you rely on. They’re scientists in laboratories that might be the cradle of a coronavirus cure. They’re financiers.

All had their reasons for faith in America, and many had that faith rewarded.

Has Donald Trump soiled the welcome mat for them? Yes. But it’s beyond his power (or competence) to erase completely decades of an openness that has made this country so alive with possibility and so thrillingly diverse. That aspect of America is bigger than he is. I cling to the hope — no, the conviction — that it’s more durable, too. And while his philanthropy turned out to be a sham, American philanthropy isn’t. We’re an unusually, commendably charity-minded country, one of the most generous in the world. We can (and probably should) grouse cynically about the ways in which many plutocrats atone for their greed and launder their reputations with “good works,” but the moral value placed on those works says something good about all of us. It says that deeply embedded in our national identity is the belief that the blessed should give back — that the fortunate have a debt. While that thinking hasn’t translated into ample concern about our social safety net, it has given rise to an extraordinary array of foundations and institutes and educational centers and advocacy groups that aren’t the norm in most of the world and are the envy of much of it. I mention all of this in response to a request that many of you emailed to me after last week’s newsletter, in which I digressed from a lament about the poor character that many Americans have shown during this pandemic to say: “I remain deeply in love with America and fiercely proud of it.” You asked me to explain that love and pride just a little. I haven’t traveled the world as extensively as some of the people I know, but I’ve visited more than 30 countries on five continents and lived for two years in Italy, where I worked as The Times’s Rome bureau chief. That’s part of the context for what I’m about to say: America has a special commitment to excellence. There’s a palpable determination among many people, many schools, many communities, many companies to be “the best.” And while that drive can be lavished on trivial pursuits and is sometimes an expression of vanity and avarice as much as anything else, it also yields examples and advances that enthrall, enlighten and transform the world. It’s the gateway to remarkable achievement and has often been the prompt for invaluable leadership. Yes, we Americans have a swagger that doesn’t become us. But we have an equally noteworthy appetite for self-examination and self-deprecation. Not all of us, I grant you that. But many of us. We’re constantly embroiled in debates about how far short of our ideals we’re falling. And while that’s because we indeed fail regularly and miserably to practice what the loftiest language in our loveliest documents preaches, at least we recognize that. At least it gnaws at us, feeding a national conversation that, to my ears, over time, is as frequently about our folly and our fallibility as it is about our glory. And at least we have those ideals, that tug toward a “more perfect union.” There’d be no betrayal of our principles if they didn’t exist in the first place. There’d be no letdown of the kind that I — and, I suspect, many of you — feel so keenly right now.