I'm Kywright and this is the United States of anxiety, a show about the unfinished business of our history and its grip on our future.

The foundation of our democracy has always been skewed towards one group over another.

1619 is as foundational to the American story as the year 1776.

It is a privilege to become an American, not a right.

There's something should have down.

There ain't no justice in the town.

There are some people who are not willing to be physically violent, but there are some people who are willing to strip you up your rights and vote in violent weights, right?

I have children. I'm 27 now.

I don't want them at 27 fighting the same fight,

that I'm fighting just a little bit different

that my ancestors fought.

This almost feels like the 1850s. Michelle Obama had this line in her speech at the Democratic National Convention.

She said, if you think things cannot possibly get worse, trust me they can and they will.

She was really teeing up her get out the vote pitch, but it's been just like a month and a half since then. It already feels more like a

prophecy. Anyway, what it really brings to mind for me is a common misunderstanding about the

cycles of change in the United States.

People talk about the political culture as a pendulum, that it swings back and forth.

I think it's a lot more useful and maybe more urgent to understand it as a tug of war.

So this week, with certainly the most consequential election of my lifetime,

just 37 days away,

we're going to unpack something historian Eric Foner said to me earlier this year.

Slavery was 250 years more or less. We're only 150 years past the end of slavery.

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