Podbit · The Bulwark Podcast
From 1619 to 1865, enslaved people fought for an emancipation the vast majority never lived to see. Clint Smith argues that the responsibility passed down to him — and to all of us — is to keep chipping away at the wall of injustice, knowing we may not see the breakthrough ourselves. That's not despair. That's the longest tradition in American history.
Where this was said
At 49:45 · chapter starts 45:00
Tim Miller admits to melancholy about the holiday, and Smith meets him there before offering something more sustaining. He tests out the analogy he uses with middle schoolers: just as we hold ourselves accountable for our mistakes without pretending we never made them, we should hold America to the same standard — acknowledge the wrong, learn from it, and try to become better. He notes that the celebration of the 250th is in some ways a celebration of only one iteration of America's birthday; some would argue America's true birthday is 1965, when Black Americans could more fully participate in democratic life. Miller briefly plays devil's advocate, noting that Canada seems to be managing a multiracial democracy reasonably well, and Smith pushes back: Canada's multiracialism is recent and has a fundamentally different historical foundation [1] — Clint Smith "America has never fully lived up to its founding promise — and right now it's backsliding. But the aspiration of a multiracial, multiethnic…" 45:00 . Then Smith arrives at the passage that gives the episode its name and its emotional core: from 1619 to 1865, enslaved people fought for a freedom that the vast majority would never see for themselves. They fought anyway, because they knew that someday someone would [2] — Clint Smith "From 1619 to 1865, enslaved people fought for an emancipation the vast majority never lived to see. Clint Smith argues that the responsibil…" 49:45 . Smith says he thinks about those people constantly — about what responsibility their example bestows on him, on his children, and on anyone who benefits from their sacrifice. 'We're all chipping away at this wall,' he says, 'and you don't know if the wall is 6 inches thick or 6,000 miles thick. But what you know is that the more you chip away at it, the less the people who come after you will have to chip away at.'
America has never fully lived up to its founding promise — and right now it's backsliding. But the aspiration of a multiracial, multiethnic, multi-faith democracy at this scale has never been attempted anywhere else. Clint Smith refuses to abandon that project, even as he acknowledges how far we are from it.
The first enslaved people arrived in the British colonies that would become the United States in 1619, and from that moment they were fighting for freedom — mostly without living to see it.
Factories that replaced coal engines with electric ones in the early 1900s got only 6% efficiency gains. Those that redesigned their entire factory around electricity got a 3x productivity improvement. Swapping AI tools into your existing structure will give you 6%. Rebuilding around AI will give you 10x.
Lebanese terrorists backed by Iran were holding American hostages throughout the Reagan presidency. Reagan had loudly campaigned against negotiating with terrorists — putting him in an impossible position that his team quietly decided to ignore.
During the Iran-Iraq War, the US openly supplied Iraq with weapons, training, and intelligence. At the same time, Oliver North was secretly funneling missiles to Iran. The US was playing both sides of a shooting war.
Oliver North traveled to Iran under the alias 'William P. Goode' with a fake passport. CIA Director William Casey allegedly gave him cyanide pills so he could kill himself rather than be tortured if captured. He returned safely and the deal moved forward.
The Pentagon sold missiles to the CIA for $3,700 each. The CIA sold them to Richard Secord at cost. Secord sold them to Iranian middleman Ghorbanifar for $10,000 each. Ghorbanifar charged Iran even more. The profit — including $3 million in interest in one Swiss account — was diverted directly to fund the Nicaraguan Contras.
America secretly transferred 2,000 missiles and missile parts to Iran in 8 shipments over more than a year. Only 3 of 7 hostages were released. Three more were taken. The net result was zero freed hostages and a full-blown constitutional scandal.
On October 5, 1986, a CIA Contra supply plane flew a weapons drop at 2,500 feet in broad daylight. A Sandinista soldier shot it down. The only survivor, Eugene Hasenfuss, had borrowed a parachute from his skydiving brother. He was captured, paraded in front of cameras, and told the Sandinistas everything he knew.
The CIA supply operation used a front company called Southern Air Transport, widely known to be a CIA cover. Crew members of the downed plane carried their Southern Air Transport employee IDs in their wallets. One also had a business card directly linking him to Oliver North's office in Washington.
When the scandal broke, Oliver North and his secretary Fawn Hall conducted what became known as a 'shredding party,' destroying a day's worth of documents. The full truth of Iran-Contra may never be known because of what was fed through that shredder.
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