You Have to Fight

On a birthday I share with a country I love

I’ve always felt a certain undeserved pride in sharing a birthday with my country. I am a son of the greatest country on earth, a benefactor of a nation that has given me the opportunity to chase a life that I was not born into. There is no other country on earth where a grandson of immigrants who came to our shores without shoes can aspire to political leadership. But there is also no other country on earth where so many suffer so needlessly. America has the ability and the responsibility to deliver a life of good health and fair wealth to all of her children. An America that does not tell you where to work or who to love, but lets you choose the life you want to lead. I have seen the light of this America, the fruits that she offers to those fortunate enough to reach it. My dreams of political office would be just that, dreams, in any other country on earth. But in America, a middle class kid from the middle of the country can truly, if naively, believe they have a shot at the highest office in the land.

I know, though, that the current environment in our country can feel hopelessly dark. The passage of the ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ is an unfortunate reminder that the arc of fairness does not bend one way. It can be bent and broken, shattered by the lie that America’s greatness lies in the individual, not the community. We have come to treat self-interest as virtue, and it has become the Achilles’ heel of a country built on shared responsibility. This dog-eat-dog mentality has permeated our politics just as much as our populace and has made our country the worse for it. We have lost the courage to dream bigger, to reject the false premise that one person’s gain must be another’s loss. This is a sickness that runs far deeper than just one bill, no matter how horrific, or one president, no matter how corrupt. It is a sickness of spirit.

This sickness can only be excoriated from our great American society by action. I’ve written before about how repulsive I find cynicism in the social sense, but equally as destructive is the political pessimism that seems to channel through the lives of young Americans who have been afforded far too much not to fight. As a middle class American, I know that there are families below my income level who do not have the choice to speak up. I’ve met fellow Americans living on the street who fight every day to survive. I’ve seen how cruel this country can be, not by accident, but by design.

It is the same design that the ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ will further codify through cuts to an already shredded social safety net. A system created to keep those most disadvantaged down, silenced just enough so that someone like me can cross the street and stay comfortably distracted. It works well, but it does not work perfectly.

You cannot hide the inequality in our country once you’ve seen even a fraction of it. I do not write this to dwell on the fact, because those who experience it do not need me to remind them, and those who have not are aware of its existence nonetheless. I write to ask you: what good is it not to fight? What other choice do we have? The flame of a fair and free America is dying faster by the day, and without organized action will flame out entirely. Yes, the ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ is an abhorrent disaster of policy on a fiscal and social level. Yes, it can feel as though conservative politics are steadily overpowering their liberal counterparts. All of it is true. None of it excuses inaction.

Fighting for your ideology is not a zero-sum game where you either take home the trophy or leave an embarrassed loser. The ‘Big Beautiful Bill’, for example, sought to sell millions of acres of our most cherished land to the private sector, before public outcry pushed Republican Senator Tim Sheehy to exchange his vote for its removal. Despite originally passing a complete repeal and additional tax on renewable energy products in the House, the Senate amended these rules to a version that remains disastrous but stops short of catastrophe. And perhaps most importantly for our short-term future, the provision banning state-level AI regulation was entirely removed from the legislation.

I understand completely that our current moment can feel like too much. That to fight is to merely delay the inevitable, as our country slowly marches not toward a single collapse but through a series of quiet, compounding ruptures. Our founders wrote that we were one nation under God, and I believe in that sentiment. But I also know that to be one nation under a higher purpose will require perseverance through the worst of its antithesis. President Trump touted his belief in putting ‘America First,’ and in some respects, he has done exactly that. He has helped healthcare conglomerates grow richer and fossil fuel giants pollute faster. The president has, therefore, put his twisted version of America first.

I believe in putting Americans first, because I know that the ideal of the country that I love is just that, an ideal. In order to see this vision of a fair America, the only path is to fight. Fight no matter the odds, no matter the trajectory. Fight. Fighting with an understanding that brash hatred will be rebuked by the Americans who deserve better. Fighting with a purpose larger than the individual, toward a great society where private ambition is matched by public compassion. This is my purpose in life, and on this great day, a day I share with this great country, I am proud to say I will never stop fighting.