“It is time for us all to decide who we are.”

This line, from the musical Les Miserablés, has been ringing in my head since the images from the Capitol insurrection yesterday. In case you missed it (who could?) Trump supporters took Trump’s call to action and turned it into a physical threat against our democracy. During the vote to confirm Biden’s electoral win, Trump supporters attacked our Congress with all the passion of terrorists. They believed the lie that Trump had won. They used violence to try and prove that it was true.

The most powerful image for me was a man marching into the Capitol building holding high a Confederate Flag. Even during the Civil War itself, that flag was never inside the Capitol.

Our country is founded on the principle that all people are created equal. We have failed spectacularly at living up to that principle so far, but for 245 years we have been working toward it. It has been much too gradual and with much too much pain and dissent, but over the arc of history we have included more of us. We are still striving to include more. Tellingly, it is not the people who are less included who are storming our seat of democracy at this moment. It is the people who were included all along and now fear their own loss of power.

“It is time for us all to decide who we are.”

This is the first line of the song “Red and Black,” sung by the Les Miserablés character Enjolras, the night before a battle for liberty. The song also contains lines such as “Red, the blood of angry men/ Black, the dark of ages past/ Red, a world about to dawn/ Black, the night that ends at last.”

We know who Trump is. We know him better than any politician, any celebrity has ever been known. It is clear who he is. But when will we all, finally, decide who we are?

Our candidate mocked disabled people, and we let it pass.

Our candidate was caught talking about women as though they were objects made for his pleasure, and we still elected him.

Our president called white supremacists “fine people” and allowed peaceful Black Lives Matter protestors to be gassed, and we did not censure him.

Our president tried to make deals with foreign adversaries to stay in power, and we did not impeach him.

Our president has incited violence against his own government, and we have not yet removed him from office. Even if we do, there will still be millions of people who voted for him.

I am saying “we,” even though at least half of us didn’t want this. I am saying “we” because the half who didn’t want it couldn’t do enough to persuade the half who did. I am saying “we” because unless we find some way to come together, our “democratic experiment” of 245 years will have failed, and true inclusivity will become an impossible dream.

Who are we? What is America? The election may have passed, the results look promising, but there’s so much more work to be done. And it starts with all of us choosing who we want to be in this historical moment.