State betrayals created permanent enemies of the country.

Evidence

What they did was to create permanent enemies of this country…I use Ben as just an example, because God knows with the Vietnam War and the corruption that has happened in this country and what they’ve done to people—not just Blacks but to poor people as a whole—how many enemies have they created? This country had its opportunity to choose the right road, but they’ve decided over and over again to take the wrong road….I don’t know if it can ever come back again, ‘cause I don’t think it will have that opportunity again to make that decision of whether…to take the right road or the wrong road. — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Begin Again, 482

Categorization

• XREF: Feeds the reader’s thesis that late Baldwin’s ‘failed reckoning’ framework is fatalistic — Dennis doubts the country ever regains the chance to choose rightly. Key to defending late Baldwin’s despair as essential rather than bitter.