At the Democratic presidential debates this week and as the campaign heats up in the months ahead, listen for the word "suck."
Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts has been using it frequently in connection with health care. In the first round of debates she said, "the insurance companies last year alone sucked $23 billion in profits out of the health care system."
The fiftieth anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission reignited controversy about America's greatness (or lack thereof). Putting human beings on the moon decades before the Internet was a singular achievement. One might think it obvious that such a monumental accomplishment is evidence that the United States has been a great nation.
Not everyone agrees. Skeptics point to national sins such as slavery, displacement of Indigenous people, state-enforced segregation, and gender discrimination as evidence that America was never really all that great. But this is to confuse greatness with perfect goodness. America's historic offenses, as grievous and unjust as they were, prove the rule that America has been both great and good, though not perfectly good.
