'Cause we also are entitled to the rights to be endowed

[sovay]

We made strawberry ice cream. We ate summer foods and did our best not to melt. My nearly five-year-old niece and my cousins' nearly two-year-old child chased one another around the island in the kitchen hissing at one another and air-clawing and giggling like a couple of baby werewolves. I have been saying that I am celebrating the Fourth of July like Pesach this year: tell the story of our freedom and since all people are not free, open the door to the stranger, let all who come in. a_reasonable_man told me about July 4, 1854, when Massachusetts abolitionists decorated their homes with black crape for the public mourning of Liberty because Anthony Burns had been taken back from his free life in Boston to slavery in Richmond with a full escort of federal troops in accordance with the Fugitive Slave Act. William Lloyd Garrison burned a copy of the Constitution. Today there were protesters at the Statue of Liberty, Therese Patricia Okoumou who climbed as far as the statue's robes and said she would not come down until the children were freed and is now in police custody. The problem with America is not that it is irredeemable; the problem with America is that it has always been somebody's dream and somebody's nightmare. We have always had to choose pieces of our country to fight for and pieces of our country to fight. I have been seeing a particular line from the Declaration of Independence making the rounds on social media: "But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security." Celebrate that; don't fetishize it; do it better from now on.

Comments

[gwynnega]

Well said!

[sovay]

Well said!

Thank you!

It's a real question, how to celebrate a holiday when the law of the land is selective about—or outright against—the sentiments being celebrated, how to be part of a country when all expressions of nationality have been co-opted by nationalism. This is what I've got. I recognize it won't work for everybody, but it doesn't have to.

[kore]

The problem with America is not that it is irredeemable; the problem with America is that it has always been somebody's dream and somebody's nightmare. We have always had to choose pieces of our country to fight for and pieces of our country to fight.

That is very good.

[sovay]

That is very good.

Thank you.

spatch had to listen to me last night because I had run into someone on Facebook declaring that our generation will never be forgiven for what we permitted to be done in our name—that we do not deserve to be forgiven—and I blew a fuse because I couldn't hear anything in that statement beyond and now that we are past the point of no return, oh, well. I have a lot of trouble with the language of redemption and forgiveness. I can use it, but a lot of it seems very abstract and more about meeting some spiritual standard than actually doing the here-and-now work of reparation or healing or just going the hell away. Very often it seems like a distraction. So in that sense I don't care if what the present administration has done in the name of this country and with the consent of many of its citizens is unforgivable: I care about what the rest of us are doing to stop it. Even if we're not forgiven for it. Even if we're remembered as kind of mediocre at best. That isn't what matters. What matters is that harm is being done and we have an obligation to do something practical about it. It's like the idea of irredeemable America. First of all, I have a hard time hearing people say that seriously without feeling it's just more American exceptionalism, inverted for a change: as our glories were unique, so are our sins. Secondly, so that means what, exactly? That there is no point in working to build something better? You won't get a sticker for it, so what's the use? I'm sure it can't be that defeatist, but then I don't understand what it is intended to convey. I don't know if we have reached the point where our country is too broken to be recovered to a state of liberal democracy rather than an authoritarian kleptocracy of indefinite lifespan. I would like to think not, but I acknowledge that a lot of people whose business it is to watch canaries in coal mines are reaching for the gas masks (and as one of the forms of canary, I admit that I glance increasingly at the bars of my cage and worry about having neither the money nor the connections to get out of the mine). But if we have not yet reached it, then I don't see how it possibly helps to behave as though we have. I do not like language that removes the responsibility to fight.

[kore]

I really wish I didn't have period brain so I could say how good this was! I was bummed and angry all day (also, period brain) and if we have not yet reached it, then I don't see how it possibly helps to behave as though we have is so lovely and fierce. Thank you.

[sovay]

I was bummed and angry all day (also, period brain) and if we have not yet reached it, then I don't see how it possibly helps to behave as though we have is so lovely and fierce. Thank you.

You're very welcome.

*hugs*

P.S.

[kore]

Also, Happy Birthday to a very good friend of mine. I hear 100 is the new 20

OMG, I love him (I SO wanted to write a Steve 100th birthday fic since I didn't do a Bucky 100th one but what with the abscess and period it just didn't happen. Bleargh).

[sovay]

OMG, I love him (I SO wanted to write a Steve 100th birthday fic since I didn't do a Bucky 100th one but what with the abscess and period it just didn't happen. Bleargh).

P.P.S.

[julian]

I had seen a headline in passing about someone climbing the statue and police being after them, but not the background as to why, so thank you!

[sovay]

I had seen a headline in passing about someone climbing the statue and police being after them, but not the background as to why, so thank you!

You're welcome! I got her name from a different article, but first saw the story here.

[aurumcalendula]

I love this bit: The problem with America is not that it is irredeemable; the problem with America is that it has always been somebody's dream and somebody's nightmare. We have always had to choose pieces of our country to fight for and pieces of our country to fight.

[sovay]

I love this bit

Thank you.

[cmcmck]

Been a bit melty here too!

More forecast for the next couple of weeks.......

[sovay]

Been a bit melty here too!

How's the political climate?