Next to Christmas, the Fourth of July was my favorite holiday. When I was small, it meant going to the Bay Shore Marina for the day and evening. My brother and I played and swam in the Great South Bay with our cousins while our parents yakked or took a swim themselves. Later, we would change into play clothes and play tag. Anticipation began to grow as our dads grilled hamburgers and hotdogs and our moms set out the tablecloths and salads. The wait until fall dark became a difficult test of our patience. The wait would pay off with a fabulous Grucci display of bright colors and loud booms.
When my family moved to Maryland, one of the activities I missed deeply was the Grucci fireworks and playing with my cousins. About 5 years later, we “discovered” Ocean City, Maryland. We went for a week every summer. What was special was that My cousins’ family would come, and we’d all rent a house together for a week.
One year, my family went the week of July 4. My uncle was unable to get away from work and so my cousins’ family were unable to join us. I was 16 and lonesome. I decided I would walk the boardwalk downtown and hang out on the beach to watch the fireworks. My 14-year-old brother wasn’t interested in going with me, and I planned to go alone.
My dad said he’d go with me. That was a surprise. I knew my father loved me, but we weren’t that close. At that age, I hadn’t learned sign language, and communicating with my parents was difficult and frustrating. Looking back, I think he didn’t want me to go alone. I did feel more secure in his company. As it got darker, I didn’t have to worry about what to say anymore because he couldn’t read my lips anymore. So, we relaxed and waited. When the fireworks started to go off, my heart swelled with juvenile patriotism.
By that point, I’d had years of learning American history up to the point of the Revolutionary War. I knew the names of all the battles and the heroes during that time were figures I admired greatly.
The Boston Massacre in 1770 pretty much set things in motion. I’d learned that Crispus Attucks was the first American killed in the fight for independence. What I didn’t learn in school was that Attucks was a Black-Native American.
In school, we didn’t learn that Abigail Adams wrote to her husband, John, while he was in Philadelphia haggling with the Continental Congress to declare independence from Great Britain. She asked John Adams to “remember the ladies”. She wanted women’s rights to be included too so that they wouldn’t have to be so dependent on their husbands. We know where that went. “We hold these truths to be equal, that all men are created equal.”
I learned about Abigail’s plea after I’d graduated high school. In fact, I think I first heard it when I went to a play in American Sign Language at Gallaudet College, an adaptation of “1776”.
I learned something else about the Declaration after seeing the play and then watching the movie. “All men are created equal” didn’t literally mean any and all men. It meant all white men. The scenes in which members of the Continental Congress fought over whether or not to free slaves and count them equal were very disturbing.
There is a song in that movie that particularly upset me. It’s called “Molasses to Rum to Slaves”. In it, we learn that we can’t blame only the Southern planters for slavery. Northerners, particularly in the Northeast, were also complicit.
Ugh. My Revolutionary heroes were tarnished. They were ordinary men who made mistakes.
I still enjoyed the Fourth. After I married and had children, Rich and I would walk to Town Center with the kids. They would play and every now and then come ask us if it was dark enough yet. The fireworks were awesome. There came a year when Rich’s heart had weakened, and he couldn’t walk the mile. However, we lived next door to the middle school, and they had a large field. We’d go there and we’d still see the fireworks.
Rich passed away in 2001, about 4 months before 9/11. Lee Greenwood came out with a very patriotic song, “Proud to be an American”. Americans came together after that devastating attack on us and it seemed everyone was singing that song. After I became active on Facebook and Blogger, I’d include a link to that song.
Not this year.
Americans are
not pulling together anymore. We are not all equal. There are forces driving us apart. Instead of
North and South, we have Blue and Red. We have fascism vs. democracy. White supremacists and christian nationalists
are against Black people, immigrants, women’s rights to health choices, and the
LGBTQ community. I suppose they feel threatened, fearing that they won’t be in
the majority anymore. They've forgotten that America is supposed to be a melting pot.
The checks and balance system carefully construed by the Constitution’s writers have become askew. We have a corrupt Supreme Court undoing fundamental rights that were enacted during the Civil Rights movement. The Court’s ultra-right-wing conservative justices are hoping to further undo rights enacted in the 1970s. They began this slaughter of rights when they overturned Roe v. Wade.
We have had a deadlocked Congress for the last 20 years, it seems. Previously, Democrats and Republicans disagreed on almost everything but, for the sake of the country, they’d find common ground so they could compromise and get bills passed. In the 1990s, however, the Republican Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, set in motion a “scorched earth” policy. The Republicans no longer were willing to find common ground and so Congress usually is at an impasse.
For a miserable four years, we had a malignant narcissist in the White House. I think the worst thing that man has done was to encourage white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and other violent extremist groups to come out into the open to bully, threaten, and otherwise terrorize opponents. That awful man refuses to go away. He has been convicted of sexually assaulting E. Jean Carroll, currently has 37 felony indictments over his mishandling and sharing of classified documents, and is at the center of investigations regarding his involvement in inciting the January 6, 2021 coup.
Almost half
the country supports that man and would like to see him become President again. God forbid.
So no, I’m not playing “Proud To Be An American” because I’m not proud. I’m angry.
I will have my adult children come to visit and enjoy grilled chicken, corn on the cob, and salad. We will watch “1776”. I will enjoy their company, and the movie will remind me we still have far to go.
I will close with this link to Frederick Douglas’ "The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro" speech delivered on July 5, 1852. Happy Fourth, I guess.
