I had to renew my driver's license this week, and went to the downtown brooklyn DMV to take care of it. I realize that getting a driver's license is supposed to be mindless drudgery, but I am a sap, so it ended up being something wonderful. Everyone needs a license, so to be at the DMV is to truly get a snapshot of who it is that lives here.

At least to the degree that Brooklyn reflects the past of this country, so does it foreshadow our future. The next America is going to look like Brooklyn, and one need sit in the middle of it for only a short stretch to see how revolutionary in the history of the world it is. While we can all disagree on precisely how high and how low the big moments in American history are, it now seems beyond the point of debate that our new America has transcended its original framework. Martin Luther King's "Dream" speech was the Gettysburg Address of the 20th century. The American Dream has come to be reconfigured in such a way that it may yet fulfill what its creeds suggest is possible: that ALL are created equal, and entitled to equality under the law.

This is a nation whose identity has come to be almost entirely, individually, and purposefully a social construct. Among American's there is now not any ethnicity, religion, history, native culture, or political history to adhere to, or be bound to. Nor does our diversity simply reflect our colonial past, as the diversity of Europe and Canada does. All that binds us is the simple desire to be here. That the America of the future will be much more diverse than its past is a foregone conclusion; however in being so, it will be no less American in every important sense of the word (and also, in the unimportant senses of the word: are there any fewer McDonalds in the inner city than suburbs?)

That the American Empire will be Brown, Black, White, Yellow, & Red is an amazing thought. Where else have the keys to the kingdom transferred in this way? Yes...this transfer was hard won by the inheritors, but it was won. It has already happened. I am sure of it.