I have always loved the fourth of July; the
mid-summer holiday, the nostalgic look back at the victories of the Continental
Soldiers, the American revolutionaries who threw off the yoke of tyranny and
the oppression of kings.
I loved it.
I loved it uncritically as a child.
I loved it without thought or question, and a
part of me still does.
As I grew older and learned more about the
real history of the revolutionary war, the real politics of the founders, the
philosophies that drove them, the numerous ways in which they were morally and
ethically compromised (compromised is too light of a word), compromised by war
mongering and profiteering, compromised by slave-holding and the exclusion of
women from governance; compromised by religious intolerance and a greed that
drove them against the First People, as I learned more about these historical-truths
it became self-evident that the nation was founded on a carefully balanced set
of ideals that the founders themselves did not have the courage to live up to.
America was founded on a compact of lies.
The preamble to the constitution states that
all people are created equal, that all people inherently possess rights which we
cannot be separated from, the foremost of which are life, liberty and the
pursuit of happiness.
We hold these truths to be self-evident that these
rights are inalienable, or so we are told. We are told that these rights do not
derive from government, they derive from God, the creator of the universe, God
the creator of every person in it, these rights do not belong to us because we
are Americans, they belong to us because we are human beings and the American
purpose is to defend those rights, both within our borders and around the
world.
We have only ever paid lip service to these
ideals. It was never more than wishful thinking, and today within our own
borders we are trampling all over these rights, rights which belong to
everyone, including, the immigrant and the alien among us, including our black
and brown skinned sisters and brothers, including the working poor, and the
homeless and everyone struggling to get by.
Instead of welcoming and protecting and
sheltering the poor and the disenfranchised who have come to us for asylum, we
are imprisoning them, denying them due process, dehumanizing them, abusing
them, and it is breaking my heart.
Instead of protecting and serving the
citizenry we are paying huge sums of money to police forces that kill the
people with gross prejudice and criminal discrimination.
We have always failed to live up to our
ideals.
The expression of these self-evident truths in
the Declaration of Independence, and its codification in law in the United
States Constitution and the Bill of Rights, did not at the same time abolish
the institutions of slavery, give women the right to own land, to vote and
other modes of self-determination, neither did it not outlaw wars of aggression
against the sovereign nations of the First People. These self-evident
truths, these inalienable rights, did not prevent the United States of America
from entering a campaign of genocide and extermination against them.
The founders applied these principles to
themselves and their “peers,” they used those principles to justify their
separation from the dominion of the kings of England, they used these
principles to protect their property after the War of Independence had been won,
but they refused to extend these principles to everyone within the aegis of
American power; we continue to live with those failures today.
The 4th of July is Independence
Day, it is a day to celebrate our freedom, and our victory in the Revolutionary
War, there is much to celebrate in that.
I am a veteran, I know that war and battle
create many opportunities for selflessness and displays of courage that most
human beings cannot help but admire and applaud, even though the antecedents of
war and the causes of conflict are always unjust, morally vacant and abhorrent.
Always and without exception war represents a
failure of human beings to live up to the purpose we were created for.
In my heart, I want to celebrate the
revolutionaries, their courage, the flag which unifies us as a nation, but I find
it difficult. The story of America, beginning on July 4th, is one
that has many bright moments, but we are foolish, cold-hearted and ignorant if
we do not at the same time recognize the millions of slaves who built our first
cities, who farmed the plantations, who established our first industries and
the millions of people belonging to sovereign nations that we crushed in our
westward expansion, starving and killing them without mercy, displacing them, outlawing
their religion and customs, erasing their languages.
I find it difficult.
Who among us, knowing that history, finds it
easy?
You would have to be a monster to be unmoved
by the tragedies that ensued after the signing of our Declaration.
Yesterday Donald Trump held a political rally at
Mount Rushmore, a sacred site that was stolen from the First People and carved
up into a monument to honor a group of men, who may have been brilliant and
wise and courageous, but who were also deeply flawed and guilty of the worst
crimes against humanity
Donald Trump did it to exacerbate the racial
tension that has griped the country in the fourth year of his presidency. He
held it there like a cartoon villain, bankrupt and with no good reason to
continue, he did it to stroke his ego to cover up the blemish of his incompetence
at handling the worst public health crises the country has ever seen.
The 4th of July should be a time of soul
searching and deep reflection and community, forget about the flag waving and
jingoism.
Ask yourself what it means to be an American;
immigrant, refugee, stolen people, enslaved people, conquered people,
vanquished people, and the revolutionary. We are the descendants of them all,
the immigrant, the refugee, the stolen, the enslaved, the conquered, the
vanquished; we are their children and grandchildren and great grandchildren…we
are one people with a common history, and a common set of ideals we should be
continuously striving to live up to.
We are a great nation, if and only if we
remember it all.
Given – 2020.07.04
Given 1st - 2016.07.04
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