Independence Day Thoughts

I woke up this morning unnaturally early, with a sick feeling in my stomach. I went downstairs while my wife and daughters slept to make some coffee. I noticed a little pink water beneath the watermelon sitting on the counter. I picked it up, only for watermelon water and pulp to gush out all over the counter and floor. Evidently it had been bruised or something, but I took it as a kind of sign on this Independence Day in this year of nightmares, 2018.

How in the hell can people be out giving a party for this country while it jails at least 2000 children it has kidnapped from its parents for the crime of seeking asylum? How can we celebrate when we are being ruled (not governed, ruled) by a despotic kleptocratic sociopathic black hole of greed and bigotry?

This feeling is not new of course, and Frederick Douglass said it best with his famous oration "What To The Slave Is The Fourth Of July?":

"What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy — a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour."

This day always makes me feel ambivalent, but this year the feeling is something deeper, and Douglass' line about a nation guilty of shocking and bloody practices that are the shame of the world feels especially resonant. Today as in Douglass' day children are being ripped from their parents, but now it is being directly carried out by the American government.

When I did my year abroad in Germany for my dissertation research I discovered that no matter how much I enjoyed my time in Germany, I was an American at heart. For all this country's faults and horrors it has a vibrancy and diversity that I missed while I lived in Germany. Fourteen years later, however, I am rethinking things. It's too late for me to leave, and I have too much invested here anyway. Sometimes, however, I think that I should be teaching my daughters German so that they will have the choice to emigrate, because the future of this nation looks incredibly bleak. Of course, there are reactionary forces on the rise in Germany, too. Nowhere may be safe from the rising tide of hate submerging the world.

I love my country, but I love it like a family member. Sometimes we love family members out of blood and a sense of obligation, even when they are cruel and treat us poorly. In that sense my love may be misplaced, but I don't think it can be destroyed. And that's why this day hurts so much. The country that I cannot stop loving and caring for is committing horrible crimes while its self-appointed "patriots" cheer on. This is not the first time, of course, but this time it is cutting me harder and deeper. So I will think this day on what needs to be done to make this country worthy of my love, but also whether my children should follow my path or not.