Xavi Benjamín He/They

Wade Davis in his piece ​“The Unrav­el­ing of Amer­i­ca” for Rolling Stone:

The Amer­i­can cult of the indi­vid­ual denies not just com­mu­ni­ty but the very idea of soci­ety. No one owes any­thing to any­one. All must be pre­pared to fight for every­thing: edu­ca­tion, shel­ter, food, med­ical care. What every pros­per­ous and suc­cess­ful democ­ra­cy deems to be fun­da­men­tal rights — uni­ver­sal health care, equal access to qual­i­ty pub­lic edu­ca­tion, a social safe­ty net for the weak, elder­ly, and infirmed — Amer­i­ca dis­miss­es as social­ist indul­gences, as if so many signs of weakness.

To me, the idea of ​“Amer­i­can Excep­tion­al­ism” has always been a pro­pa­gan­dist lie. It’s impos­si­ble to be tru­ly excep­tion­al whilst ignor­ing sys­temic racism and inequal­i­ty, nor­mal­iz­ing gun vio­lence, and hav­ing a large por­tion of the pop­u­la­tion pride­ful in their igno­rance and dis­be­lief in science.

My hope is that this nation­al tragedy serves as a cat­a­lyst for true progress; where we turn our backs on indi­vid­u­al­ism and fight for the col­lec­tive well-being.