Consider this contrast in two men: Wes Moore, the new governor of Maryland, calling young people to public service, while Brandon Russell, a young neo-Nazi, allegedly plots to cause massive chaos by knocking out the power grid around Baltimore.
One day we hear the new governor, a 44-year-old Army veteran, declare that “service will save us.” A few days later, federal authorities charge Russell, the 27-year-old founder of a violent extremist group, in a scheme to, as his girlfriend and co-conspirator allegedly put it, “lay this city to waste.”
I don’t know if the contrast between Moore and Russell will occur to anyone else; it might seem weird to even mention the two in the same sentence. But I make the connection because of where we are as a nation. On one hand, we have plenty of good people who take full responsibility for the care and feeding of American democracy. On the other hand — at the extreme political right — we have people who apparently want to see the whole thing burn to the ground.
