I still believe in the promise of the United States of America. I still am proud of the basic principles that our country was founded upon. I still celebrate our Independence Day, July 4th, despite the stain of idiocy, grift, pedophile protection, self-serving aggrandizement, and destruction of all previous norms that the current despotic administration has brought upon this country.
I was just a little kid on July 4, 1976, but I remember it like it was yesterday. There was a big buildup to the event. For nearly a year, they taught us details of US history and the Revolutionary War. We were told what a big deal it was that this fragile experiment in self-rule had lasted for two hundred years. None of us kids could really wrap our heads around all of this, but I do remember that everybody came together and the bicentennial was very unifying. Everybody wore faux-Revolutionary War-era clothes, three-cornered hats, and everywhere you went, red, white, and blue flags and banners were displayed. I remember they painted all the fire hydrants to look like Revolutionary War soldiers and historical figures—anybody else remember that?
My family was living in St. Louis (where I was born) at the time, but we would move to Virginia later that summer, and we’d be in Virginia for five years. However, on July 4th, 1976, my family went down to the St. Louis waterfront for the bicentennial event. I’ve never seen that area so crowded before or since. It was a sea of people. It was insane and chaotic, but I remember everybody was in a happy, buoyant mood. Everybody in the whole city was there. The fireworks display and patriotic music were the most impressive thing I had ever seen or heard (I remember vividly how much the reflection of the fireworks off the St. Louis Arch and the reflection off the Mississippi River enhanced the whole experience—it was kind of magical). I was proud to be a part of the whole celebration. I was proud to be an American.
My great-grandfather going back eight generations, Moses Dickerson the 1st (there were a bunch of Moses Dickersons later, named after him), fought in the Revolutionary War against the British. As a reward for his service, he was given a land grant by the newly formed United States government off the New River in Floyd County, Virginia. I guess you can say that I’m as American as it gets. I was born here and I intend to die here, in the land of the free and the home of the brave.
When I was a kid, I always imagined there would be adults in the room in our federal government. There would be cool heads that would prevail. In 1976, we had just gone through the dishonor of Watergate and the Nixon resignation, but we got through it. The shoreholds of our checks and balances prevailed.
I hope that is what will happen with this great country, when this administration is finally gone. But I’m not so sure. It sure feels like late-state capitalism, where we literally eat ourselves with greed. Billionaires buy our news media companies so they can blatantly lie and spread propaganda to gullible old people and rural people, all so they can get their tax breaks and their business incentives, so they can….buy their fourteenth mansion and their eleventh mega-yacht. People die and suffer because America refuses to give health care to their sickest and poorest people—the only civilized and developed country in the world that doesn’t offer health care to its citizens. Yet we offer billions in military aid to countries like Israel and Argentina, who do offer heavily subsidized health care to their citizens (and heavily subsidized college tuition, as well). The man at the top speaks in incoherent, incomplete rambling thoughts like some cartoon character of a mentally incompetent self-important Napoleon-esque dictator, and millions cheer. The same man starts wars without Congress’s approval, going against the advice of his own military. The price of gas goes sky-high and the cost of groceries and other goods becomes so expensive that the common man can’t even afford basic necessities.
How did we get here? What happened to this country? This country used to stand for something. The first word of our country is “United,” and yet the current administration rules with a constant state of division, Us versus Them, we’re right, you’re wrong. It’s the furthest thing from unity imaginable. All so these billionaires can reach in our pockets and rob us blind. Man, it’s weird and disturbing to see it all going down, and so many people acting like it’s normal.
Today, as the moron-in-chief delivers his speech in Washington, DC (because no self-respecting musical artist would play his partisan-divided political propaganda event), I’ll just think of how different everything was on July 4, 1976. I’ll hold those American principles close to my chest, remember how unified we all were that day, and think of what it must have been like when Moses Dickerson the 1st fought in the Revolutionary War for a concept of a new country where men could be free of a king’s rule. I’ll close my eyes, and I can still see those red, white, and blue fireworks exploding in the sky above the St. Louis waterfront. Happy Fourth of July. Now where’s my three-cornered hat, because there’s a revolution to be fought…
