I’ve always struggled with patriotic stuff. Probably because I’ve never really had a taste for the tradition of weaponizing the sentiment whenever anyone questions policies and actions of a country that forgets itself.
Don’t get me wrong, I like cotton candy, and hot dogs, and civic orchestras doing Sousa marches as much as the next red blooded American male, but my generalized fervor for the stars and stripes usually ends there.
It’s probably because I cannot ignore the blanks of historical record. You know, the selective memory and cultural amnesia we all seem to get intoxicated by every midsummer.
See, we celebrate our independence from the crown of England on July 4th. The birth of our nation. And freedom for all. The whole thing was a construct, an ideal to strive for. That wasn’t yet achieved as the war to earn that independence was still on.
See, the whole problem, at least how I see it, is that day memorializes a time when only landed white males of a certain class enjoyed the rights granted them by their declaration. It has been an uphill grind from everyone else ever since.
We could say Juneteenth is the true American Independence Day. But that says nothing for the women who suffered disenfranchisement till a generation later. So is August 18th, 1920, when the 19th amendment was ratified the true day of American Independence? Not really, many states used their get out of jail free card to justify shitty behavior and employed things like poll tax and or other chicanery to keep Asian American women or Indigenous women from voting, for example.
And even as the practical application of enfranchisement slowly slowly corrected over the ensuing decades, it still resists bulwarks to try and deprive many under-served and under-represented communities of their singular right to participate in a governance that by definition they should not be deprived of.
And even if we set all that aside, what of the independence for Americans to love members of the same sex and have the right to marry them, and receive the same economic rewards given to their heterosexual neighbors? What of them? Well, the Respect for Marriage Act was signed into law by President Biden on December 13th, 2022.
So, happy 2nd year of Independence, my fellow Americans. We’re almost three.
Wait. Maybe not. I mean, how are we defining independence? Well, I know one thing I’m not going to ask any of the Originalists who cling to the document that those landed white men created over two hundred and fifty plus years ago and could not predict how the tools of modernity could exploit the loopholes in their law.
Democracy, at best, is a living, breathing thing that demands constant weeding. All too often, it relies on ‘the blood of patriots to refresh it,’ as the saying goes, but I think it needs less blood and more tending. By capable hands. But before any of that, we may need to accept the true picture of our past, and reckon with it. And not be afraid of the legacy of deprivation that has lurked within our lofty principles. We are a nation of hypocrites. Lets just embrace that.
Let us see the striving reflected in the eyes of those most vulnerable. That is something worth singing for. But I could still do without the fireworks.