The New Yorker:

From 2017: Though so much of what we are experiencing today is “not normal,” it is also not new.

By Vernon E. Jordan, Jr.

In the past year, I have been asked many times to reflect and comment and commiserate on the state of our country. Each time, as I recount my own experience, I try to stress how important it is that when we doubt or disagree with our leaders we are not governed by them. We are governed by laws. When those we elect seek to subvert norms of behavior, we have rights and laws to fall back on. And, when elected officials seek to subvert the rights and laws of this country, we have lawyers, judges, and courts to fall back on. That has been our history and our journey as a nation, and it has been my journey as well.

At times like these, we need to be reminded of that journey, because, though so much of what we are experiencing today is “not normal,” it is also not new. Our situation may feel unprecedented and our course may feel uncharted, but we have been here before. I am reminded of my earliest exposure to American politics, growing up in Atlanta. In the early 1940s, there was a gubernatorial race in Georgia, where Eugene Talmadge, the governor at the time, was running for reëlection. I recall sitting in our apartment in the first public-housing project built for black people in America, and Governor Talmadge coming on WSB radio, describing the two planks of his platform, which, as I recall them, were “niggers” and “roads.” As I recall, he was against the first and for the second.

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