Tuesday, July 4th, is America’s Independence Day. It commemorates the event in which the representatives of 13 British colonies sent a letter to the king of England basically telling him to give them their due respect as an independent nation or kiss their collective ass.
He did not, in fact, accept.
247 years later, Americans talk about freedom, patriotism, national pride, etc. but what the hell is there to be proud of? Thanks to conservative politicians, their liberal counterparts who make pretty speeches while sitting on their hands, and the corrupted Supreme Court, a majority of Americans are steadily seeing our human rights being stripped away. Women no longer have full autonomy of their own bodies (not that we really had much to begin with). Members of the LGBTQ+ community are being told once again that they are no longer people under the law. Latinx people are being shoved onto buses and transported to locales unknown to them into Democrat states as some kind of twisted Republican game of Gotcha! Black people are being targeted on a regular basis by crooked cops and Karens while minding their own business. Collapsing bridges and crumbling roads are a sad testament to the state of infrastructure in this country while we pour billions into yet another aircraft carrier or super secret jet we don’t need to win an international pissing contest nobody asked for.
Buildings collapse and/or explode thanks to greedy developers who are in bed with their corrupt political buddies. Today people have a better chance of finding the Holy Grail than affordable housing. Business owners lament about being unable to find people willing to work while they themselves are unwilling to pay living wages.
The NRA and their political buddies line their pockets with blood and profits in a society that is more than willing to implement bulletproof backpacks and special rooms for children to hide in, trembling for their lives while a police state full of cowards stand outside waiting for the gunman to run out of bullets before they act. Whether it’s to go to the grocery store or the mall, school or work, to see a movie, a concert, or a day at the beach, leaving the house is a crap shoot as to whether or not we’ll return alive and unscathed at the end of the day all because gun nuts have stomped the second amendment to death without actually reading the damn thing.
Are these things to be proud of? Is this the freedom we’re supposed to be experiencing that makes the United States of America “the greatest country on Earth?”
In 1852, former slave turned abolitionist orator Frederick Douglass remarked about how this was still a young country at 76 years old. He said,
“Three score years and ten is the allotted time for individual men; but nations number their years by thousands. According to this fact, you are, even now, only in the beginning of your national career, still lingering in the period of childhood. I repeat, I am glad this is so. There is hope in the thought, and hope is much needed, under the dark clouds which lower above the horizon. The eye of the reformer is met with angry flashes, portending disastrous times; but his heart may well beat lighter at the thought that America is young, and that she is still in the impressible stage of her existence. May he not hope that high lessons of wisdom, of justice and of truth, will yet give direction to her destiny? Were the nation older, the patriot’s heart might be sadder, and the reformer’s brow heavier. Its future might be shrouded in gloom, and the hope of its prophets go out in sorrow. There is consolation in the thought that America is young. Great streams are not easily turned from channels, worn deep in the course of ages. They may sometimes rise in quiet and stately majesty, and inundate the land, refreshing and fertilizing the earth with their mysterious properties. They may also rise in wrath and fury, and bear away, on their angry waves, the accumulated wealth of years of toil and hardship. They, however, gradually flow back to the same old channel, and flow on as serenely as ever. But, while the river may not be turned aside, it may dry up, and leave nothing behind but the withered branch, and the unsightly rock, to howl in the abyss-sweeping wind, the sad tale of departed glory. As with rivers so with nations.”
Was Mr. Douglass right? It’s been over 170 years since he made this speech so, yes, compared to other nations around the world the US is still in the adolescent stage. We’re having our growing pains and our awkward phases with lots of moments of embarrassment. Everything looks bleak as hell right now to the point where I’ve started to wonder whether we will have the strength and fortitude to struggle past this point in time to successfully exist as a country thousands of years into the future or have we started drying up. Will this country wither away 20, 30, 50 years from now? Will we even make it that long?
Of the founding fathers Douglass said,
“They loved their country better than their own private interests; and, though this is not the highest form of human excellence, all will concede that it is a rare virtue, and that when it is exhibited, it ought to command respect. He who will, intelligently, lay down his life for his country, is a man whom it is not in human nature to despise.”
This is the spirit in which we need to live again. Today’s society is frightened of the future and self-absorbed, focused only on what benefits ourselves and not our neighbors. Many see events happening around them but because it doesn’t affect them personally, they don’t pay attention. It’s not their fight so why should they care? It doesn’t matter if you’re Black, White, Latinx, Asian, Christian, Muslim, Jewish, man, woman, non-binary, etc. The issues that we’re facing as a country should disturb you as an American because you’re a decent human being who is sick and tired of all the bullshit. We should be fighting for each other against those who seek to destroy all of us. Like it or not this is everyone’s fight and it will, eventually, affect everyone.
How the hell can we hold our heads up as Americans and talk about pride and patriotism and blah blah blah when a majority of our citizens are given second-class treatment? Other countries, hell, communities in this country are issuing travel warnings about traveling here because it’s too dangerous. We have politicians running for president with criminal records. We have politicians in office now who are under legitimate investigations for shady and illegal conduct. The lead contender for the GOP nod is perfectly capable of not only running for president while in prison for treason of all things but if he actually wins, can run the country from his prison cell! There is nothing in the laws, rules, and regulations that would disqualify him probably because 300 years ago no one figured anyone would have the balls to try! And this is what we’re supposed to be proud of?
Honestly, I haven’t celebrated July 4th since 2016 when it became evident that a majority of Americans had lost their damn minds. I’m hoping we’ve already hit rock bottom and can only go up from here because I, for one, am sick to death of experiencing a lifetime of historic events crammed into the last 20+ years. I’m tired. I’m ready for safe and boring. Let the entertainers stay on the screens and stage. Keep the businessmen in their little offices and religious nutbags in their gigantic megacomplexes of worship to wail and gnash their teeth and rip each other off to their hearts’ content. Leave the governing of this country to the lawyers, experienced lawmakers, and people of education and intelligence so we can get this country on track. I hope that in the 50+ years I have left on this planet I can, at some point, show pride in my own country.
Anyway, I'm out. Enjoy the holiday weekend. Be good to each other. Try not to blow yourselves or anything else up. Hasta la bye-bye.
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