Happy Fourth

I wrote the piece below in October 2006, right after Congress adopted the Torture Bill. I'm re-running it here because it's the Fourth of July, and this little rumination came to mind somehow when I thought of American independence and what it meant to be a patriot two hundred and thirty-something years ago (it probably entailed a little more than flaunting lapel pins and yellow ribbons).

I'm just as hard-bitten as before on the spineless bastards who've been wiping their backsides with the Constitution for the last seven years, but the sadness and despair I felt when I penned the words below have lifted a good deal.

No, January of next year won't feel like we've been transported overnight from Dante's Inferno to Paradise on Earth. Still, the worst is over, and there's cause for guarded optimism. Bush's approval ratings are as dismal as his leadership style, which makes him a lame duck and therefore — I would hope — relatively powerless. And though I certainly haven't fallen prey to Obamania, the senator from Illinois does seem like a thoroughly thoughtful, decent fellow.

Will Obama disappoint if judged by whatever our highest standards for a good president are? Aye, time and again, no question. Will he disappoint compared to George W. Bush and his assortment of louts, liars, and lackeys? Impossible.

If that's all the progress we can get, I'll take it.

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I Have Hope Because I Have no Choice

This week marks the fifteenth anniversary of my emigration from the Netherlands to the United States. I've been in no mood to celebrate.

Truthfully, I'm not even certain I would still move if I had to make that choice today.

Oh, in some ways, I ooze patriotism like never before. I bought an American flag last year — better late than never, I tell myself — and have been flying it on national holidays with a measure of satisfaction. During the last two July 4th celebrations in my pretty New England town, I listened to the band on the green strike up a slightly discordant, quivering-but-beautiful version of the national anthem, and — fairly astonished at my own reaction — I was overcome with emotion, quietly muttering to myself to pull it together.

My love for America persists, unbroken, unregretted, but it's now often akin to the love one might feel for a family member who, tattered bathrobe and all, slowly slips into Alzheimer's twilight. Tender, filled with good memories, but tinged with an aching sadness.

Still, that metaphor only goes so far. I'd love someone dear to me unconditionally, warts and all. I cannot muster that much for my adopted nation. Not anymore.

Too much has happened to this country. Too much has changed. And too much is changing still.

Fifteen years on these shores — and two days before that anniversary hit, America officially joined the ranks of foul two-bit dictatorships by embracing a torture bill that I'd call the final fucking straw if it wasn't for the fact that more final fucking straws are almost sure to follow.

If future historians are still by law allowed to write an honest assessment of our times, they'll say this: America wasn't brought to its knees by ululating jihadists with box cutters, but by brazen traitors in bespoke suits who, with compunction nor restraint, doodled hateful little black mustaches on the Capitol's portraits of Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin and George Washington — laughing.

And now? I have hope because I have no choice. Because my life is here. Because I want my two girls to know and love their country as I do, only with less trepidation and less fear for the future. I want them to feel what I felt a decade and a half ago when, employing bluster and bravado, I might have gently mocked the notion of America being the "shining city on the hill" with my mouth, but never with my heart

Comments

[Martin Owens]

Rogier:

We're still here.

Happy 4th.