Who will you be when history calls?

Trevor Noah asks this several times in his recent Netflix special and it hits so hard. As someone who has had to redefine myself due to chronic illness, I am well aware of how much work goes into actively choosing who you are going to be.

If you live in the United States of America today can you really think of a better time to put in that work?

Our very way of life is under attack. Not rhetorically, not by diversity or advancement, or immigration, or change, but by rich, white men intentionally dismantling it while we fight over bathrooms.

So who are you?

Are you someone who ignores what’s happening and just lives their life?

Are you someone who thinks that they will benefit from what is happening and is helping them destroy our nation?

Or are you a fighter, a resistor, dare I say a patriot? Someone who is willing to fight to take this country back from these maniacs?

Think of the pledge of allegiance. As GenX I spoke it every single school morning, hand over my heart, while it was read over the loudspeaker.

I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Liberty and justice for all.

Every single day I swore a pledge to a flag that stood for liberty and justice for all. Everyone. Every single person in a supposedly indivisible nation.

It didn’t say “Liberty and justice for whites” or “Liberty and justice for citizens” or “Liberty and justice for the rich”.

Liberty and justice for all.

So I am choosing to fight for the rights of my fellow Americans, and the immigrants that have come here, like my ancestors before them, seeking a better life. I am choosing for fight for equality, for science, for diversity, for all the things that actually make this country great.

I am choosing to fight for my flag.

That is what being an American means. Standing up for liberty and justice for all. So many of our countrymen have let the ultra-wealthy asshats in charge convince them otherwise.

But I’m GenX and I am here to tell you that you are acting like the Russians in a bad 80’s movie if you are still supporting Donald Trump. You are not the good guys in this story. You have lost the narrative. There is simply no other way to write your choice.

It’s not too late to make a different choice though.

So who are you going to choose to be? History is calling.