Thread by @dcpetterson

Almost two and a half centuries ago
a bunch of guys got together
and they said,
"We're going to build a nation.
Without a king.
Without nobility.
A nation
where The People
rule ourselves.
A nation
where We The People
are the government."

These guys said,
"We will write down the rules
by which this new nation

will function.
And we will obey those rules
because We The People
choose to rule Ourselves."
.

That had never been done before
in the history of Planet Earth.
.

Never before
.

never

Never had a group got together
and built a nation
by setting out the rules
by which that nation
would function.
.
Never before.
.
Never.
.

Never before
had the colonies of an empire
said to that empire,

"We will not be ruled by you.
We will rule Ourselves.
We will be a free people.
And we shall rule ourselves."
.
Well, people had said that.
But they'd never made it stick.
Not ever,
.
We were the first.
.

The rest of the world laughed.
They said,
"The People cannot rule themselves.
The People need kings.
The People are stupid.
The People are common.
The People need kings
to rule them.
Your experiment will fail.
It must fail."
.

It must fail
because if it did not...
if the American experiment did not fail
it would mean The People could rule themselves
without kings.

This thought frightened the kings.

Well, of course it did.

But for almost two hundred and fifty years
it looked like we would succeed.
.

Truth be told, we had a hard time of it
around 1860

when half of America
wanted to own slaves
and the other half
insisted that ALL people
were created equal.
.
But we survived that
after fighting what was then
the bloodiest war the world had seen.
.

We survived that
and survived another century and a half
during which time
the American colonies--
this backwoods tidal estuary
in the flood of history
became the world's only remaining superpower.
.

We survived another century and a half,
won two world wars

and walked on the moon.
.
We survived another century and a half,
only to become victims
of a foreign coup
brought to you
by social media.
.

Now
we face our greatest threat.
We ask the question:
.
Will a government
of The People
by The People
and for The People
perish from the face of the Earth?
.

We are at risk.
We are at war.

We are at wit's end.
.
America is dying.
.
Democracy is not for spectators.