What I can say for certain is that I'm not yet ready to abandon the possibility of America -- not just for the sake of future generations of Americans but for all of humankind. I'm convinced that the pandemic we're currently living through is both a manifestation of and a mere interruption in the relentless march toward an interconnected world, one in which peoples and cultures can't help but collide. In that world -- of global supply chains, instantaneous capital transfers, social media, transnational terrorist networks, climate change, mass migration, and ever-increasing complexity -- we will learn to live together, cooperate with one another, and recognize the dignity of others, or we will perish. And so the world watches America -- the only great power in history made up of people from every corner of the planet, comprising every race and faith and cultural practice -- to see if our experiment in democracy can work. To see if we can do what no other nation has ever done. To see if we can actually live up to the meaning of our creed.
-- Barack Obama, in his new memoir A Promised Land, as excerpted in The Atlantic, November 2020
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