I’ve said this in a few different ways a few different times in the last several days:
As a student of history, I can’t despair now. The world, as a whole, is by and large SO MUCH BETTER than it used to be. As a woman of Irish decent, I’m not a starving serf of some minor English lord, with 6 kids I can’t afford to feed and six more in their graves. My friend of Chinese decent isn’t setting dynamite in a railroad tunnel for the price of a meal and a bed and enough opium to make it through the night. As bad as things are, they are consistently getting better. The injustices we’re facing are smaller and better injustices.
The arc is long, but it bends toward justice.
Now I don’t have any idea what “western values and principles” are, but I do know what my values and principles are, and I don’t intent on rejecting them no matter what parade of fascist baboons comes traipsing through the White House.