For the past 10 years – such brutally discouraging years in the United States – we’ve been hearing good-hearted citizens put forth something they believed to their bones.

“This is not America,” they would insist as federal agents shot people on city streets, as immigrants were called rapists and animals, as Donald Trump and his cronies stuffed their own pockets while they shrugged at the price of gas and groceries, and humiliated the nation on the world stage, alienating allies and sucking up to autocrats.

And sometimes a disheartened reply would echo back: “But this is America.”

After all, millions of voters had gone to the polls twice, in 2016 and 2024, and gleefully elected a mean-spirited bigot, a sexual abuser who eventually would be held liable in court, a president whose administration inspired the observation: “The cruelty is the point.”

But on Tuesday, that discouraging conversation – changed. Not just a little, but radically.

American citizens rose up and showed the world their nation’s truer colors.

They showed it to be a place that values decency. A place capable of choosing diversity, not mocking it. A place strong enough to say “enough, already”.

The global caricature of the ugly American as an ignoramus in thrall........

© The Guardian