Happy Independence Day!
Well, we've made it 250 years! Of course I took to my annual tradition of posting 4th of July trivia on Facebook. I can't recall exactly how long ago I started doing that, but perhaps I'll look it up and make that one of my trivia posts about the 4th of July. There wasn't anything big going on here, just the household, no big BBQ, not guests, just kind of a quiet day, and of course some World Cup matches that we had to watch. Yesterday I talked about the kind of disappointing way this year is feeling, and how it's basically a missed opportunity because you only get the 250th once, and we ended up in the stupidest timeline, so it was lackluster and disappointing.
However, there's another side to it that I've been thinking about lately, and it's a problem that's been growing for quite some time. I've seen it a lot in my lifetime, especially when I look at the post-9/11 world, and the "War on Terror" that descended into the war in Iraq. There was a strong current of "you're either with us, or with the terrorists" and there was no room for dissent. However, I know it didn't start there, it's been going on since the days of the Vietnam War. I don't think it's necessarily been a choice exactly, but it's been slowly happening, and it's to a point that I think it's a rather big problem. The more progressive side of things has kind of allowed the ideas of patriotism to slip away, and we've ceded that idea, and the framing of it to the right. We've allowed the right to set the terms and the norms and we've kind of accepted it. I've seen some push back against it, but I think that it's something that's going on.
Some of it is logical, because when you look at the history of this country there are many shortcomings that we have had. Some of it also falls into the issue that the teaching of history has taken kind of a second class, or back seat, to the "more important" subjects of reading and math. We therefore have a lot of people who are not quite sure how to approach our history, however to analyze it, how to contextualize it, and walk away with impressions that I don't think are fair or helpful. I think a lot of people have looked at the shortcomings and places where we have yet to achieved a "more perfect union" and thrown the baby out with the bath water. We've said, these people in the past compromised on issues we aren't happy about, or set up systems that have grown to be a problem, or had beliefs that were bad, and therefore we are are terrible country. Of course, that's not to say that it's not true that people in the past did things that today we wouldn't, and that we shouldn't be critical of those ideas, actions, or beliefs. We definitely should be, but I think that by taking those failures and projecting it on the whole is not helpful, and it makes us lose a lot of support, but also makes us too pessimistic, which then leads right into the hands of the other side who says that government should be small and do nothing.
I think a perfect example of this may come from what we celebrate today, the Declaration of Independence, and specifically the man who wrote it, Thomas Jefferson. We all know that in the Declaration, Jefferson wrote that "all men are created equal" despite the fact that he literally owned men and did not see those men as equal. He is reprehensible in that way, and it's a terrible point of view and belief system that allowed that to happen. However, at the same time, those words have been used to push for expansion of rights and to move us towards that goal to make those words true. The Declaration and the ideas were used as the Union pushed to end slavery, the ideas of equality were used as we pushed for civil rights. We could look at it and say, "nothing these slaveholders made was good because they were terrible people, and therefore our country is a terrible country." Many people do this, and I've spoken to them. However, we could also say, "these men had terrible ideas, however, the system they set up allows us to hold them to their words, and push us in the right direction. We haven't made it yet, but we can and we must keep pushing."
We can't let cynicism and negativity blind us to the tools we have and the pride that we should have when our country has done the right thing. That's the thing about a democracy, it is not a linear path, it has ebbs and flows, and in the end it's up to us. We have made great progress, we have had severe deficiencies, and we should know those deficiencies so that we can make progress in the future, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't celebrate our country and our past, because many just like us fought, and in some cases died so that we could continue moving the ball of progress towards that more perfect union. We need to keep optimism and positivity and celebrate the victories without succumbing to the shortcomings and seeing it as all there is. History is really the stories that we tell, and we can cast ourselves as villains because of the flaws, or we could promote the good, acknowledge the bad, and keep working to be better. In the end, America is only a framework and set of ideas, what we do today will direct the course, and future generations will chastise us for our failures, but they should also celebrate us for what we were able to accomplish. I think in the end, this idea for me often comes to the "boomers" who are regularly the villains in the story of today. Look what the boomers did for x,y,z but that same generation also had those who marched in the streets, denounced the Vietnam War, and made strides in issues from the environment to civil rights to humanitarianism. Now, we could say that those Boomers are bastards and fuck them, or we could realize it's more complicated, and that as a generation there are flaws, but also great successes. In the end, I think the progressive side needs to find a way to our own form of patriotism, because that's what we'll need politically because right now we've let the right define it, and lost large swaths of the country to those ideas.
It's a bit rambling, but that's what happens with my stream of thought.
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