The Promise of America - Essay and Reflection on 250 Years

The Promise of America

By Jean-Jacques Credi

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Between 1776 and 2026

Every moment you experience, every room you walk into, there is space—a space meant to offer you learning, growth, advancement, and the opportunity to be better. At least, that is true for some, but it has not yet been made true for all. E pluribus unum. Out of many, one. All Men are Created Equal. These are the foundational promises America is meant to espouse and embody. But as our nation marks its 250th year of existence as a sovereign nation built on the premise of freedom, we have to be honest with ourselves and name the intentional barriers ruining this promise.

For my father, Dr. Magdi E. Credi, MD, that space of opportunity began in an ambulance bay in a small American town. He had always wanted to direct movies, to capture riveting human stories on film like Alfred Hitchcock, but his parents insisted on medical school. He never regretted the pivot. Fret not, he made plenty of movies subjecting us to repeated walks down the stairs on Christmas morning, and he created baby movies for all the grandchildren. Meanwhile, he chose a lifetime of saving lives over producing films because it was what he was called to do. He came from Egypt with a heart full of purpose and an unwavering belief in the promise of America, “the Greatest Country on Earth,” he would say. As an immigrant, his most prominent refrain was a joyful, booming, "Only in America!" He expressed that for both the good and the bad. Even when things were dark, the optimism of his deep faith shined through the disappointed shaking of his head. He possessed a burning fire of purpose to heal the world, and his belief in what this country could be remained steadfast.

Beside him stood my mother, Dr. Marie-Rose Credi. In Egypt, she was an educated, brilliant woman trained to be a lawyer—her mind finely tuned to understand legal structures. Yet, when they took the brave leap as immigrants to build a life here, she redirected that immense intellect toward a different kind of building: raising six American children. She traded legal analysis for a bustling home. She learned how to make American food, sewed our costumes, and said yes to just about everything we asked, ensuring that all six of us grew up cared for, well fed, and deeply rooted in this country. She made us confident that our place here was earned and ordained.

c1966, Egypt, Magdi and Marie-Rose pictured with his 1956 Ford Fairlane

Growing up, our heritage was woven quietly but beautifully into the fabric of our lives. Conversations vacillated naturally among multiple languages, and ethnic foods were prepared often. I remember wearing my father’s galabeya—the long, flowing gown customarily worn in North Africa—to an international parade at school. Children, operating on the instinct to categorize, asked why I was wearing a dress. I tried to guide them toward curiosity rather than judgment. It belonged to my father, I told them. I am Egyptian, I would say, among many other things. But more than that, my father was a human being who believed that the true measure of a life was doing the maximum amount of good for others - to serve others as Jesus. 

Lately, I have been feeling his absence acutely, searching for the safety net his existence always provided. I find myself wishing my father were here to talk through the heavy, suffocating gridlock of our current reality. The ancestral fiber of the web holding us together can feel severed, leaving us to float a bit more aimlessly against the currents disturbing our peace. Part of me is deeply grateful he does not have to witness what this country has become. We are under an onslaught of vitriol, looking around at a chaos where it feels like the roller coaster safety harness is not firmly in place.

This semiquincentennial year was supposed to be a milestone of progress, a grand celebration of a pluralistic society striving toward its highest ideals. Instead, it feels like a fractured failure. The promise of liberty has been eclipsed by an administration exposing its own feebleness through a string of public embarrassments. We have watched a national parade sputter into obscurity, international relations deteriorate into petty grievances, and a theatrical attempt at Palestinian peace collapse under its own hubris. We see dangerous, costly escalations of war with Iran, alongside bizarre obsessions with the cultural landscape—from petulant demands over the Kennedy Center name to a staged UFC fight and a poorly attended National Mall fair. So much money is going to waste that could be used for the actual good of the American people! All this would certainly get a disappointed “only in America” refrain. 

But the true devastation isn't found in these failed spectacles; it is found in the relentless assault on our legal norms and human dignity. Our nation is caught between the cruelty of targeted ICE raids and devastating tariff wars, watching an administration that treats citizenship not as a shared covenant, but as a weapon of exclusion.

The recent Supreme Court decision to uphold birthright citizenship threw this entire crisis into sharp, terrifying relief. While the ruling technically protected the status quo, the mere fact that it was a battleground is a chilling indictment of Donald Trump’s vision. If that constitutional pillar had been overturned, the legal foundation keeping millions of us here would have vanished overnight. Even my own status—and the status of my siblings and children, the very lives my mother rewrote her future to nurture—could have been called into question. It threatens to turn the home our parents built and millions of others cling to into a fragile, conditional luxury.

They tell us to "Make America Great Again," but my father always maintained that America is already the greatest country on Earth. I believe it can be. But we must ask honestly: was it really ever that great before for everyone? We have spent 250 years in a pendulum of fear and control over love and nurture. First to end a king’s rule, then to conquer the first peoples, next to enslave a whole race, followed by a hundred years of civil rights atrocities and legislation designed to oppress women and minorities. We assembled the greatest fighting force the world had ever seen to purge fascism from Europe in the 1940s, only to watch tens of millions of Americans get duped into voting that very same brand of authoritarian intolerance right back into the presidency.

Yet, history has proven another undeniable truth: the unstoppable power of the people to overcome. Every time bigotry opens its mouth, it meets a righteous, generational pushback that refuses to tolerate oppression. We see it today as high school and college students stage massive walkouts across the country, standing up to demand better. We hear it everyday on late night talk shows and social media memes clapping back at this administration. The soul of America does not belong to the politicians or the oppressive policies; it belongs to the collective determination of its people. And right now, the World Cup showed up at an opportune time to showcase the best of humanity – just to rub it in a little more – how ridiculous isolationism, oppression and selfishness look in the Oval Office. My favorite take on this is the joke that the World Cup is one giant sleepover of cousins whose parents do not get along. And we are loving every minute of it!

If we want to talk about putting "America First," let it mean what it should mean: prioritizing a "for all means all" mentality. Putting "America First" should mean standing up for everyone who is striving to survive, to work hard, and to provide a better life for their children, regardless of their starting point, their skin color, their gender, or their circumstances. It means honoring the worker, the doctor, the mother, and every everyday person holding up the rafters of this democracy as an American because they are human and they are here. Even Canada had the courage to revise its National Anthem to say “True Patriot love in all of us command” in place of “in all thy sons command.” America will truly be the greatest country on Earth when more good than harm is true for all of us.

As the fireworks go off for this tarnished semiquincentennial, I call on the Quechua language, a language born out of South America associated with the Inca. Many words in their language are not for a singular, isolated thing; instead, they have words for the space in between because power is in the connectedness, not the individuality. I believe my father’s legacy exists in that space in between, sustained by the devotion and quiet sacrifice of my mother. They left behind the physical and systemic boundaries of their home country breaking its own heart when Egypt’s progress was stifled by assassinations and political regression, only to see their children bear witness to the same failure fracturing America. When future historians retell the space of America’s first 250 years, I hope they tell the truth. I hope they convey just how profoundly terribly we treated blacks, women and immigrants and I hope they tell the stories of the millions of Americans who fought for justice. It takes a special kind of evil to spew divisive rhetoric for political points with little care of the negative impact it has on real people. It is a complete disregard for the sacred space between us that connects us and truly gives us power and sustains a positive legacy.  

America at 250 may be stumbling in the dark, but those of us who remember the heart of the people who built it will not let the fire go out. America was built by immigrants, forced and voluntary, and will continue to be built by the people here and those who come after. We can do better. We should do better and sadly, this is not it. 

Many people get curious about me. They think I am French. They think I am Canadian. I say I am American. They laugh and say, no really. I say I was born in New York. I say my family is Egyptian, Lebanese and Armenian. I say just like millions before me, my life has been shaped by the adversity my ancestors overcame and survived and the risky journey my parents took to flee their home to become citizens of the United States of America. To raise their children. To offer us a better life. There is plenty of room. There is abundance in this country. It is simply not fairly distributed and the system we have in place to make America great is hijacked. 

Last year, Taylor Swift released a catchy tune: Opalite. A part of the lyrics catches me everytime:

But my Mama told me

It's alright

You were dancing through the lightning strikes

Sleepless in the onyx night

But now the sky is opalite

Oh oh oh oh, oh my Lord

Never made no one like you before

You had to make your own sunshine

But now the sky is opalite

Oh oh oh oh oh

In America, where political decisions turn favors over service, everyday people have to make their own sunshine. Americans will keep making our own sunshine. We will keep bending the arc of the moral universe towards justice. Because this is not about the individual, but it is about the space in between us, our interconnectedness and how we shape that space.

This current administration is not an historical anomaly; it is a severe, devastating swing of our nation's 250-year pendulum between fear and control over love and nurture. We are watching a dark historical lineage repeat itself—the same pendulum that once sought to conquer First Peoples, enslave a whole race, and codify civil rights atrocities. It is a stunning regression to realize that the very nation that assembled the greatest fighting force to purge global fascism in the 1940s has duped tens of millions into voting that exact brand of authoritarian intolerance right back into the presidency.

Seeing this, my father would shake his head with that familiar, deeply disappointed refrain: Only in America. Only in America could a country built by the risky, hopeful journeys of immigrants turn citizenship into a weapon of exclusion. But Only in America carries another, unstoppable truth. Only here does state-sanctioned cruelty ignite an immediate, righteous, generational pushback —manifested in students staging massive walkouts, repeated No Kings Rallies and the courageous commitment to let this administration fail in public disgrace. The system may be temporarily hijacked, but the next 250 years do not belong to the fragile tyrants in power. They belong to the collective determination of a people who refuse to let the justice fire go out. Only in America.

Only in America.

References

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AI Consultation & Research Disclaimer

This document was prepared with the assistance of an artificial intelligence (AI) collaborator. AI technology was utilized strictly for creative research, factual verification, and editorial refinement, including structural organization, syntax polishing, and the compilation of academic and historical citations. All core themes, personal narratives, historical parallels, and final conceptual arguments originate entirely from the author. The AI acted solely as a supportive tool to enhance clarity, verify contemporary public records, and format references in accordance with standard academic guidelines.

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