“Take Our Country Back”
When someone says that, this is what I hear:
TAKE — providing nothing in return, using force, manipulation, mob rule, bribery, obstruction, or any other means to achieve the goal.
OUR — WASPs, aka “real” Americans.
COUNTRY — militant nationalists, willfully ignorant of anything else going on around this tiny blue dot.
BACK — back to the days when non-comformists and minorities of every kind were enslaved, ridiculed, railroaded, interred, denied the right to vote, and ignored in the courthouses and statehouses.
I don’t want to “take” this country back. I want to share it with people who didn’t win the genetic lottery by being born here. I want to change it to make a more perfect union. I want to build it to be a light shining on a hill, an example of informed democracy.