I was the kind who never missed parades or fireworks. Well, it’s been a few years since my last parade. Any fireworks I see this year will likely be from my balcony.
Why?
Well.
The idea of America has always been better than the implementation of America.
Read our founding documents. The ideals of our founding are the most noble ever espoused. Freedom is the natural state of humans, not subservience. Government exists to protect freedom.
The same country shamefully kept the despicable institution of slavery. This country also denied half its adult “free” population (women) the vote.
Some 800,000 Americans killed each other over the issue of slavery. Despicable people, such as Woodrow Wilson, helped perpetuate the myth that the Confederacy had some noble reason for existing when, in their own words, their reason for existing was to perpetuate slavery.
I grew up with this myth. It took most of my life to correct my misperceptions.
Far too many of my fellow Americans still believe the myth, despite evidence of its untruth being more easily obtainable than any time in history.
The idea of America has always been better than the implementation of America.
The thirteenth through fifteenth amendments should have made up for some of the wrongs of slavery. Due to the cravenness of our politicians, however, it took another century to accomplish what those amendments set out to do. We are a free people, indeed.
And on the subject of the 14th amendment. Some of our truly despicable politicians believe they can overturn it with the stroke of a pen. That amendment exists to ensure that former slaves are citizens. Don’t like that birthright citizenship is still a thing? Fine. Amend the Constitution. But we are a nation of (written) laws. People born within this country are citizens until then.
The idea of America has always been better than the implementation of America.
For a supposedly free people, we have a ridiculous number of victimless crimes. How many people are in prison in this country for nonviolent crimes? How much violence is committed that wouldn’t exist if victimless crimes weren’t a thing? If we were truly free, we could live our lives as we choose, so long as we aren’t harming others. Unfortunately, far too many of my fellow Americans think they should be able to regulate what others do.
The idea of America has always been better than the implementation of America.
The last six or seven years have been devastating. From electing an absolutely vile human to be president to the extreme idiocy of so many people in the face of COVID, it’s hard to take pride in this country.
A lot of people in the “party of family values” fly “F— Joe Biden” flags with their kids in their cars, and probably when they go to church. Do they kiss their moms with that mouth, too?
“Let’s go Brandon,” was never clever.
Someone once said, “facts don’t care about your feelings.” Well, COVID was, and is, real. It kills people. The vaccines, like all, are safe for most people. But this country places a huge premium on pseudoscience, and it seems like most of its people are willfully ignorant of how science works, while at the same time living with a world that only exists because of science, including vaccines. George Washington understood this, shouldn’t you? Isn’t the “Father of our Country” good enough for you?
The idea of America has always been better than the implementation of America.
It’s hard to have a positive opinion about the reality of this country. We’ve done good. We’ve done evil. The ones who squawk the most about the former don’t want to acknowledge the latter. Some, of course, don’t want to acknowledge the former. But I’m not writing for them. The ones who won’t acknowledge our evils talk the most about our goods, as if that absolves of us our evils. However, you have to acknowledge our evils in order to appreciate our good. That’s patriotism. Ignoring the evils, that’s nationalism. Nationalism is, itself, an evil. It places the State above the Country. It places the State above the people. Nationalism is a cancer growing in this country. Nationalism doesn’t embrace our ideals. Nationalism exists despite our ideals, and too many Americans are nationalists, not patriots.