July 4th -- Before it's too late

uly 4th took on different meanings for me at  different ages.  When I was very young, unlike others with whom I played, July 4th was always sad.  I learned later why it was so.  My sister five years older than I died of birth defect complications on July 4, two weeks after her birth.  My mother never got over the sadness of that date and it permeated our household. 

Later as I grew to learn all the patriotic songs, listened to George M. Cohan's patriotic music, I came to realize the tug of July 4th on my patriotic heart strings and, of course, accepted all the stories, some true and some not so true, about the American Revolution, the birthday of our nation and what it meant for us in our time.  Patriotic holidays and their accoutrements were woven into the sinew of my soul at a very young age concentrating on the positive and leaving the negative realities of the nation's birth such as the demolition of the indigenous Indian population, on the cutting room floor.

I had to wait until my college years in the late 1960's for the questioning of government policy as well as our national history to take shape.   The foundation of it began to crack.  Two issues one foreign (Vietnam) and one domestic (the black experience) began my questioning of our national truths.  Our nation's gravest and, in my opinion, most egregious domestic sin, slavery, was brought into view.  The injustice of the institution of slavery became vivid.  Lincoln freed the slaves but would gladly have repatriated them to Africa if it would have saved the union.  In high school a young woman of color whom I knew told me she was going to run for class office.  She said she knew she would never win.  I asked why and she said "because I'm black."  It shocked me then but surely does not now.   She never did win; a white girl did of course.  I reflected on that in my more mature years finally acknowledging the impact of racism on this nation.  In 1966 she could not win not even in the most academically rich and progressive state of Massachusetts.  The profound injustice in this nation of the experience of persons of color to me could not be denied and still cannot.  We see it everywhere -- in voter suppression, in a return to Jim Crow era poll taxes in some states making it harder even in our more aware time for persons of color to vote.  The right to vote, the most elemental right in a democracy is still, even now, attempted by Republicans to suppress the black vote denying power to a people who have never had enough of it.  The court packed with conservatives through nefarious means recently approved gerrymandering to ensure Republican victory in demographically changing times in those areas of the state that were purposefully drawn that is rigged for them to do so.  This is heinous.

In foreign policy I accepted the myth that this nation in war was always on the side of right.   That could certainly be said for WWII.  Since that time, however, things changed.  Vietnam I learned was based on a lie, the Gulf of Tonken resolution, and worse supported a fascist-like regime of Thieu and Ky.  Our enemy the Viet Cong won.  In the late 1960's I protested that war and now cringe at the loss of 58,000 American lives and probably a million Vietnamese, as well as the defoliation of a nation by the release of Agent Orange which kills trees but also kills humans and produces human deformity even to this day. Fast forward to 9/11 when a president took a nation to war with Iraq, a nation that did nothing to us, provoked a civil war and the introduction of Al Qaeda, a terrorist organization, never before seen in Iraq.  With the invasion of Afghanistan a 17 year old war continues.  Thousands of lives have come to an end because of it.   How many more will and to what purpose?

Paragraphs could be written about our latest worst and most democracy erasing corrupt so called president, Donald Trump.  From his support of the worst of dictators on earth to the accepting of Russian influence to elect him, Trump has probably done the most to destroy this Republic Benjamin Franklin asked us to keep.  The worst of this most nefarious, mendacious and misogynistic "president" is his crimes against humanity- the inhuman treatment of those seeking asylum here trying to escape from certain death in their country of origin.  Human beings including thousands of children are subjected to concentration-like imprisonment separating parents from their children.  There is disease in these camps, hunger, malnutrition, and stench with no place even to bathe despite the Trump administration lying telling us it is not so when it most definitely is so.  Is this the patriotism Washington and our Founders created or is it one they feared?

Still, on July 4th even with this nation's aforementioned national sins I still cry at the National Anthem, God Bless America, the Stars and Stripes Forever and take joy in the fireworks of July 4.  I do so because there is still something to be saved in this nation which in 2008 elected its first black president, in 1965 passed the Voting Rights Act, in 1917 gave women the right to vote, in 2018 the Democratic Party elected to Congress the most women in its history for a Democratic victory with a woman for the second time receiving the gavel of Speaker of the House, in 2015 it bestowed marriage rights to its gay citizens and it sill has press freedom the greatest freedom of them all.   It, despite, the previously mentioned flaws remains a work in progress.  Old Glory and the Constitution for which it stands, I believe, is the freest, strongest, wealthiest most liberated nation on earth and despite our present administration's worst efforts at corrupting it all dooming this nation to planet destruction and even possible nuclear war, I believe, it will still endure despite the strongest efforts of the richest among us to steal it. 

To prevent this we all must vote blue in every state, local, national elections and most of all RESIST this current cesspool of Trump corruption to win the day before it is too late for all of us!