On social media this Fourth of July I see a lot of people posting that they don't feel like celebrating. I understand. But I also see people from all points of the political debris field who are celebrating anyway.
A country is an artificial creation based on some unifying principles. This is true in just about any nation you can name. The decision to draw borders and establish laws turns everyone within those boundaries into a blended family.
Even families purely related by blood don't get along. Look at the stereotype of the tense holiday gathering. Did you know that the biggest drunk-driving night of the year in the United States is the night before Thanksgiving? Apparently, either to steel themselves for the first contact or to escape from the pressure before the big day, lots of people go out to bars and tie one on. Family will do that to you.
The United States, with its immigrant founders and tradition of either inviting or importing people, is like the world's biggest messy divorce and remarriage. Our founders talked a great game in their philosophical ramblings and our constitution, while still shackled to the ignorance of their time. They may have risen above the average, but there was a lot that our species simply didn't know yet. A lot of it seems like it should have been obvious: don't buy and sell people, don't dismiss an entire gender, quit double crossing the natives. I'll grant you that the foot-dragging on those was and is unconscionable. But it's not remarkable. Some people's thinking evolves faster than other people's. That evolution has to reach a tipping point that seems like it should be close at hand, but, time after time, we fail to reach it. I still believe that we are closing in on it.
I haven't felt like waving a flag and getting all sentimental about the Fourth of July for many years. I feel that the government misuses the armed forces a lot of the time, perhaps most of the time, wasting the lives and sanity of people who have signed up to serve in that life and death capacity. I deplore the way that massive wealth has made a power play, hiding behind a false image of hard work and worthy ambition, while undermining the citizen government that would make a prosperous republic possible for all. I'm depressed by the persistence of ugly, narrow visions for this country.
Like most families, we argue nastily, pushing each other's buttons in frustration, mostly making things worse. Maybe we pull it together for a short time, but those times get shorter and shorter, and occur at longer and longer intervals. The issues are important. Some of them threaten everyone's survival. Others threaten only the survival of one branch or another of the family. Every argument we've ever had -- still unresolved -- seems to be coming to a head now.
Over this grumbling mass of humanity waves the flag that was first hoisted in its early form in the 18th Century. Snatched from hand to hand are the pieces of paper that are supposed to guide us through the lives and deaths of generations of leaders and citizens. Every generation fights over the inheritance. Win or lose, every generation dies and leaves it to another. Even if this particular family breaks up, the territory itself will be occupied by one of the other families that lives on this globe, for as long as our species manages to stay alive.
Anyone who lives here has a right to wave the flag. I prefer that it symbolize responsible freedom, and the acceptance of diversity, that creates a nation worthy of the grand words used to describe it at its birth, rather than nationalism and a country in which freedom is something we not only hide from the world behind fortress walls, but steal from each other by force within those walls. But that's just how we feel at this end of the table. At the other end, someone's going to stick a fork in your hand if they don't want you reaching for the potatoes. And they do it under the same flag.
Family. They'll drive you crazy.
