Lately, in considering the erosion of America, the image that first comes to mind is Mariah Carey's now-iconic "I don’t know her" GIF. The gleeful shake of Carey's head. The subtle mischief of her utterance. The animation frames our current moment with dead-on precision. In fairness, from its earliest days, America has never looked like we knew it could. Which is to say, America—a country of sharp contradictions and tangible evils—has never lived up to what it could be.

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