I am having trouble feeling patriotic this year. There have been many years where I have proudly sported red, white and blue spangled garb, waved my sparklers, pledged allegiance and cried my way through "The Star Spangled Banner" before awesome fireworks displays, but this year I am just not feeling it.
I find it increasingly difficult to be proud of a nation so filled with violence and hate. We are trapped in a feedback loop that perpetuates these feelings and we don't even realize it. We raise our kids teaching them to be scared of those around us because, yes, we live in a scary time and place. We teach children to lock the stall door and stand on a toilet seat if they are trapped in a bathroom with a shooter in the building before we can teach them addition, because it is our responsibility to protect them in the best way that we know how. We teach them not to talk to strangers before they can read. We teach them to be wary of everyone before they can ride a bicycle without training wheels.
We were raised to be wary, or even fearful. If you were raised in a Christian house, you probably learned that the wrath of God was waiting to punish you for your sins, and I'm sure you could enumerate at length what those sins included. Many of us were probably raised hearing about how people who weren't like us were coming over here and taking our jobs, and they don't even bother to learn English. We were taught that "others" were a threat.
Now, on the eve of another presidential election, the people have the perfect talking head for all of the fear that has been instilled in them their entire lives. They are promised a future that will "make America great again," and as one Tennessee congressional candidate said, that often means "make America white again." We can build a wall and keep those other people out, then we can certainly be safe.
The message that everyone is missing, though, is that it was very rarely the others who caused the problems. Starting from the founding of America, it was us who practically wiped out the Native American populations with our European diseases, expansion, and outright war upon them. It was us who persecuted hate during the Salem Witch Trials. It was us who enslaved Africans, forced them into service for generations, then freed them only to form the KKK and lynch them. Even as these violence acts were ended, the prejudices remained behind along with an "us versus them" mentality that excluded anyone who wasn't born privileged.
So you will have to excuse me for not bleeding red, white and blue this year. I am ashamed to be part of a nation which has been laying down violence and oppression in the name of freedom for 230 years. I am not proud of a country that ignores it's own problems, like poverty, unemployment, and unattainable health care while it focuses it's attention on those other people who are coming to blow us all up and take our jobs. We point fingers at foreign terrorists while over 60% of mass shootings have had white shooters behind the triggers.
Our problem isn't about race, or where we come from. Our problem isn't about religion or what we believe. Our problem isn't about guns, and our problem isn't about what women wear, and our problem isn't about abortion, and it sure as heck isn't about who someone loves or wants to marry. Our problems are hate, and power-hungry leadership that uses hate to control.
Happy Independence Day. I hope that we can all begin to have our own independent thoughts and someday we can let freedom ring.
