1776-2020... I was a kid during the bicentennial year, and it'll be cool to be headed into year #250 in a few years, if me and the beautiful country of my birth are still around. I think we will be -- and if one of us isn't, I'd put my money on me, not her, sailing off into the sunset
No politics. Even without them, we can all see 2020 is one of those years they'll talk about for a while. We're challenged. We're at each other's throats. Half you guys are all wrong, all the time, about everything... of course. As I am to you.
Nothing about hypocrisy, statues, anything else, and let's look at some words on their merits -- even despite whatever was ill-starred about the messenger: We take these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal (and let us remember Lin-Manuel Miranda's now-famous coda, "and when I meet Thomas Jefferson Imma compel him to include women in the sequel--work!")
This country is the ideals of this country, and our progress toward those ideals. We're not a gene pool. We're not a single language. We're the idea that we ALL have a place at the table. How we fit together is what all the politics are about but let's think just for a minute about the beauty of the ideal.
On July 4 we celebrate independence from England, and by working on making those ideals real, we show that it's more than just the accent of the tax collector--for we'll always have taxes, as another founding father observed.
Let's forget the politics of the day and think a hundred years out, as Americans. Number 1, we want our country still here. Number 2, I for one want to be closer to that ideal of equality. Number 3, whoever you imagine to be the repository of hate here in the U.S. -- and please, let's not take turns pointing that finger in this thread -- I hope hate's considered a sickness by then. Maybe that will take a change to human nature itself... but I can hope, today of all days. Of course, before all that, I hope we haven't done ourselves in via our environmental issues, our access to nukes, and so on.
And since in 100 years hate will be gone, it'd be nice to be able to hug each other again, so there's that to look forward to too.
However much 2020 sucks we've been through worse. We aren't used to it anymore, and we're getting all our reminders at one time. But however much 2020 sucks, I think all of us can see glimmers of what's always been great, and continues to be great, about America.
I tried really hard not to have anything here to hate on... if you're hating anyway, that's on you. Here's to America, Americans, everything special about your countrymen (even when you can't stand them) and this glorious unholy mess we're heir to. It's full of pathologies, you can see that every day... but even when we're at our worst, something in us, I truly believe, truly wants to cure them.... though we disagree about how.
Let's "cure" it somewhere else-- for right here, right now, just Happy 4th -- and here's to the more perfect union we've always been aiming for... for all of us!!!
