I am grateful, Professor Eddie Glaude for the clarity and courage of this essay, for naming the present moment without evasion and calling it what it is. At a time when so much of our public language is evasive or ornamental, there is something bracing in an account that refuses both comfort and disguise.
What you describe here is not only an American crisis, but a civilisational one. It does not begin with Trump, nor does it end with him. It reaches into the deeper inheritance that shapes what we call Western democracy.
In my reading, the tension is not simply between democracy and its failure, but between two competing moral grammars that have never been reconciled. On the one hand, a Homeric inheritance, which I would not describe primarily as force, but as hubris, a way of being in the world in which the self refuses limit, power becomes its own justification, and the other is diminished in order for the self to stand. On the other hand, a covenantal vision, drawn from the Abrahamic tradition, not as the possession of the West alone, but as a broader moral inheritance shaped across Jewish, Christian, and Islamic thought, and transmitted through histories of encounter, translation, and exchange that unsettle any simple civilisational boundary. In that vision, the human being is constituted in relation, bound by obligation, and grounded in the image of God.
Even in its earliest formulations, democracy coexisted with exclusion, citizenship secured by the absence of others. That structure has not disappeared. It has been transformed and extended. Modern democracy speaks in the language of the covenant, but too often acts in the spirit of hubris. It proclaims equality while organising life through hierarchy. It invokes dignity while managing populations. It names freedom while securing it through exclusion.
What you call the value gap is, in this sense, the social and political expression of hubris, the patterned refusal to recognise the full humanity of the other, even while claiming a universal moral language that demands it.
This is not merely an American problem. It is a global condition shaped through the long history of empire, where this unstable synthesis, universal claims underwritten by hierarchical practice, was exported, reproduced, and normalised across the world.
And yet, the tension has never been only destructive. It has also been the ground of critique. Every movement for freedom has, in some sense, been a refusal of hubris, a demand that the covenantal vision be made real. The enslaved, the excluded, the marginalised have taken the language of dignity seriously enough to indict the order itself.
What we are witnessing now is a moment in which that tension can no longer be quietly managed. The language remains, but its moral authority is thinning. The restraint once imposed by the covenantal vision is weakening, and hubris is speaking more openly, less constrained by the need to justify itself.
If this is a moral crisis, then it is because we are being forced to confront a more fundamental question, not simply how to repair our institutions, but which vision of the human will govern them, whether we will continue to organise our world through the logic of hubris, or recover a way of being grounded in relation, obligation, and the irreducible dignity of the other.
We must remember that information is relayed to the public through 3rd, 4th, 7th hand sources; it’s difficult to accept information from sources that NEED the receiving public’s approval.
As much as I appreciate every artist’s attempt to solicit public support 😤
Manipulation!
Give em what they want, so that those supplying the are can survive.
When it’s a game of survival this leisure activity of mine (learning others opinions on real world events) becomes a way to catch my attention, and leaves me questioning the validity of the information received.
PURPOSE of the rant:
Surviving life should be free of charge to increase the likelihood of genuine communication.
• Universal housing & healthcare should be a reality in a land that rewards standout performances to increase the value of relayed information.
• All lying should come with consequences if proven and be just as consequential as high dollar crimes.
Government officials getting away with destroying lives of folks who aren’t as well connected or wealthy is what inspired this revelation.
There should NOT be an understanding that there are “NO collar” (wealthy enough not to work) “white collar” (corporate), “blue collar” (working class), and freakin “dirty collar” (unhoused humans) crimes!
A crime is A crime is A crime!
There shouldn’t be “bourgeois” sentencing that is separate from the “general public”!
NOBODY being punished she receive special treatment while the less fortunate/ commonly connected truly are being punished!
So beautiful, so touching, so full of accurate understanding of the 'imaginal realm'--which is what Henri Corbin, a French philosopher taught at Tehran University in the middle of the past century. His books emphasized the divine nature of imagination, and are still revered by seers who agree. I have several of them in my library. But your rendering of this critical and poorly understood function of the divine mind available to Jesus and all true lights of humankind. I hope you get your insight into book form, and any other format you can. It so touched my heart and soul. And how appropriate that it should be so well articulated by person of true nobility and courage. A thousand thanks...A new kind of vision, an evolved humanity inclusive of hope for the future. Just what the Good Doctor Imagined.
What a wonderful reflection! Funny to mention art—the use of imagination being God’s way of communicating with us. I just picked up Edwidge Danticat’s, Creating Dangerously. She too echoes Nell Painter’s musing that art gives us “elbow room” to imagine something greater…Danticat, and Morrison, contend that it is precisely during our darkest hour that the artist must get to work. There’s a reason why art/the artist remains the biggest threat to fascism and authoritarian rule. Even the Nazi knew this!
Excellent read. So clearly articulates the importance of free thought and practice as a critical tool for the evolution of circumstance. Thank you from a practicing visual artist who has been waiting for someone with a following to connect the dots.
From Bruce Springsteen’s amazing opening at his LA concert: … mighty E Street Band calling upon the righteous power of the arts, and music and rocknroll in dangerous times…”
Amen and ase! Even Einstein asserted that imagination is more important than knowledge. Now is the time for all creatives to envision a new way forward to a more perfect union that refocuses the notion of civilization or being civilized from having the ability to cause mass destruction through technology to understanding spirituality and spiritual essence as the ultimate technology, leading to crafting a more perfect union through a humane use of all that we create and have.
You nailed it, Eddie Glaude.And not resolving this conflict between who we as a nation say we are and what we actually think and do, could be our nation's downfall. As Malcolm said, the chickens are now coming home to roost. It's just not clear we can function with these contradictions and continue to be a major global power
Beautiful thoughts. Yes, the imagination is our path to God and also our path to our own humanity. If you can dream it you can do it. But dreams take time, patience and fortitude to accomplish. But what else is our gift of Life given to us for, if not to realize the dream of universal freedom , agape and the full expression of the better angels of our beings.
Thank you! Excellent article!
I am grateful, Professor Eddie Glaude for the clarity and courage of this essay, for naming the present moment without evasion and calling it what it is. At a time when so much of our public language is evasive or ornamental, there is something bracing in an account that refuses both comfort and disguise.
What you describe here is not only an American crisis, but a civilisational one. It does not begin with Trump, nor does it end with him. It reaches into the deeper inheritance that shapes what we call Western democracy.
In my reading, the tension is not simply between democracy and its failure, but between two competing moral grammars that have never been reconciled. On the one hand, a Homeric inheritance, which I would not describe primarily as force, but as hubris, a way of being in the world in which the self refuses limit, power becomes its own justification, and the other is diminished in order for the self to stand. On the other hand, a covenantal vision, drawn from the Abrahamic tradition, not as the possession of the West alone, but as a broader moral inheritance shaped across Jewish, Christian, and Islamic thought, and transmitted through histories of encounter, translation, and exchange that unsettle any simple civilisational boundary. In that vision, the human being is constituted in relation, bound by obligation, and grounded in the image of God.
Even in its earliest formulations, democracy coexisted with exclusion, citizenship secured by the absence of others. That structure has not disappeared. It has been transformed and extended. Modern democracy speaks in the language of the covenant, but too often acts in the spirit of hubris. It proclaims equality while organising life through hierarchy. It invokes dignity while managing populations. It names freedom while securing it through exclusion.
What you call the value gap is, in this sense, the social and political expression of hubris, the patterned refusal to recognise the full humanity of the other, even while claiming a universal moral language that demands it.
This is not merely an American problem. It is a global condition shaped through the long history of empire, where this unstable synthesis, universal claims underwritten by hierarchical practice, was exported, reproduced, and normalised across the world.
And yet, the tension has never been only destructive. It has also been the ground of critique. Every movement for freedom has, in some sense, been a refusal of hubris, a demand that the covenantal vision be made real. The enslaved, the excluded, the marginalised have taken the language of dignity seriously enough to indict the order itself.
What we are witnessing now is a moment in which that tension can no longer be quietly managed. The language remains, but its moral authority is thinning. The restraint once imposed by the covenantal vision is weakening, and hubris is speaking more openly, less constrained by the need to justify itself.
If this is a moral crisis, then it is because we are being forced to confront a more fundamental question, not simply how to repair our institutions, but which vision of the human will govern them, whether we will continue to organise our world through the logic of hubris, or recover a way of being grounded in relation, obligation, and the irreducible dignity of the other.
Art Is An Expression Of Personal Understanding
We must remember that information is relayed to the public through 3rd, 4th, 7th hand sources; it’s difficult to accept information from sources that NEED the receiving public’s approval.
As much as I appreciate every artist’s attempt to solicit public support 😤
Manipulation!
Give em what they want, so that those supplying the are can survive.
When it’s a game of survival this leisure activity of mine (learning others opinions on real world events) becomes a way to catch my attention, and leaves me questioning the validity of the information received.
PURPOSE of the rant:
Surviving life should be free of charge to increase the likelihood of genuine communication.
• Universal housing & healthcare should be a reality in a land that rewards standout performances to increase the value of relayed information.
• All lying should come with consequences if proven and be just as consequential as high dollar crimes.
Government officials getting away with destroying lives of folks who aren’t as well connected or wealthy is what inspired this revelation.
There should NOT be an understanding that there are “NO collar” (wealthy enough not to work) “white collar” (corporate), “blue collar” (working class), and freakin “dirty collar” (unhoused humans) crimes!
A crime is A crime is A crime!
There shouldn’t be “bourgeois” sentencing that is separate from the “general public”!
NOBODY being punished she receive special treatment while the less fortunate/ commonly connected truly are being punished!
So beautiful, so touching, so full of accurate understanding of the 'imaginal realm'--which is what Henri Corbin, a French philosopher taught at Tehran University in the middle of the past century. His books emphasized the divine nature of imagination, and are still revered by seers who agree. I have several of them in my library. But your rendering of this critical and poorly understood function of the divine mind available to Jesus and all true lights of humankind. I hope you get your insight into book form, and any other format you can. It so touched my heart and soul. And how appropriate that it should be so well articulated by person of true nobility and courage. A thousand thanks...A new kind of vision, an evolved humanity inclusive of hope for the future. Just what the Good Doctor Imagined.
What a wonderful reflection! Funny to mention art—the use of imagination being God’s way of communicating with us. I just picked up Edwidge Danticat’s, Creating Dangerously. She too echoes Nell Painter’s musing that art gives us “elbow room” to imagine something greater…Danticat, and Morrison, contend that it is precisely during our darkest hour that the artist must get to work. There’s a reason why art/the artist remains the biggest threat to fascism and authoritarian rule. Even the Nazi knew this!
Excellent read. So clearly articulates the importance of free thought and practice as a critical tool for the evolution of circumstance. Thank you from a practicing visual artist who has been waiting for someone with a following to connect the dots.
From Bruce Springsteen’s amazing opening at his LA concert: … mighty E Street Band calling upon the righteous power of the arts, and music and rocknroll in dangerous times…”
Amen and ase! Even Einstein asserted that imagination is more important than knowledge. Now is the time for all creatives to envision a new way forward to a more perfect union that refocuses the notion of civilization or being civilized from having the ability to cause mass destruction through technology to understanding spirituality and spiritual essence as the ultimate technology, leading to crafting a more perfect union through a humane use of all that we create and have.
You nailed it, Eddie Glaude.And not resolving this conflict between who we as a nation say we are and what we actually think and do, could be our nation's downfall. As Malcolm said, the chickens are now coming home to roost. It's just not clear we can function with these contradictions and continue to be a major global power
Beautiful thoughts. Yes, the imagination is our path to God and also our path to our own humanity. If you can dream it you can do it. But dreams take time, patience and fortitude to accomplish. But what else is our gift of Life given to us for, if not to realize the dream of universal freedom , agape and the full expression of the better angels of our beings.
Thx
https://bandyxlee.substack.com/p/statement-of-presidential-medical?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=1vumjc