Aus Der Traum?

I was out walking last Wednesday evening, enjoying the additional after-dinner daylight I think of as Summer’s true gift (now that I’m retired, I don’t get up early enough to appreciate the extra light at the start of the day), with much of the heat of the day having already passed.

I gave some thought to walking from my house to Howard T. Brown Park and enjoying the music at Rock the Docks but having hiked that route earlier in the heat and humidity to welcome the return of the Farmers Market, my legs persuaded my brain that a few circuits around Chelsea Parade was a much better idea.  

As I walked towards Monument Park (what I call ‘the first turn,’ because I break almost every project into smaller pieces), on the other side of Washington Street, my eyes caught an A-V project of sorts with two large (one considerably more so than the other) video screens expressing various degrees of unhappiness towards the current president of the United States.

It wasn’t clear to me how much of that displeasure was ideological and/or philosophical and I really didn’t have much to work with since “Buck Fiden,” and “Let’s Go Brandon,” were, I concluded, as close to cryptic and clever as the messages were going to get (without being either)  

I thought about those whose sacrifice we commemorate with the various monuments at Chelsea Parade to the wars in which they fought and died, and how they’d react to the messages across the street, as well as to the athletes who take a knee during the National Anthem (I’m thinking they’d support BOTH) and it dawned on me we have injected such coarseness into our civil discourse in recent years (if not decades) we can no longer disagree without being disagreeable.

As Edward R. Murrow (in this era of Tik Tok you can be forgiven for not knowing his name, so I added a link), noted, “We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof, and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law.

"We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep into our history and our doctrine and remember that we are not descended from fearful men – not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular.

 "We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result. There is no way for a citizen of a republic to abdicate his responsibilities. As a nation, we have come into our full inheritance at a tender age.

"We proclaim ourselves, as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom, wherever it continues to exist in the world, but we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home."

Earlier this month, we celebrated our nation’s birthday but now more of us say they’d be better off if their state seceded from the United States.

I fear this is a consequence of speaking AT rather than TO one another and listening, not to reason and relate, but to rebut and reject and I wonder if I’m living through the last days of the American Dream.   
-bill kenny

We Come on a Ship They Call the Mayflower

Don't be distracted by the spectacular fireworks display at the Harbor tonight (weather permitting) tomorrow is actually Independence Day. In a country where more and more and more of us identify politically as just red (Republican) or just blue (Democrat), with the other side always suspect, maybe it could be a much-needed reminder that two hundred and forty-three years ago, patriots saw themselves as red, white and blue. 

Between today and tomorrow, a lot of us will spend a great deal of time cooking raw meat over hot rocks, quaffing malt and barley beverages, or playing whiffle ball in the backyard and just taking it easy. All are equally worthwhile, more or less, and I suspect, crabby people like me to the contrary, those who gave their lives in the course of the wars fought for, in, and by this nation, wouldn't have a problem flipping a burger, draining a cold glass or pitching an inning or two and letting it go at that. 

We've all seen the bumper stickers proclaiming 'Freedom isn't Free' to the point where I'm not sure we appreciate fully the meaning of the words, much less the importance of the thought they express. We who've always enjoyed all the protections our Constitution and Bill of Rights provide sometimes take for granted what others elsewhere cannot, in their wildest fantasies, ever imagine. For centuries and generations, everyone everywhere has wanted to come to America in order to be free. Here's a newsflash, they still do. 

There's a reason why we have a Statue of Liberty in the New York Harbor and nobody else does and it doesn't have anything to do with who gave what to whom as a present. Who we are and what we do is the envy of the world even when we sometimes do inexplicably thoughtless, hateful and hurtful things. 

We are the most powerful nation on earth (and in the history of the world) and we are a rare and noble notion that we and we alone should determine who we are, where we live, how we worship and for whom we vote as leaders. 

We are the United States of America, not because our cars are faster, our grocery shelves better stocked, our homes prettier, our armed forces more powerful, our hair bouncier, our teeth whiter or our clothes cleaner. We are the sum of all of that and ten thousand other things--the freedom to get up tomorrow morning and move across the street or across the country and never need anyone's permission. The right (some feel it's a duty) to think our elected leaders are cloth-eared clowns who are leading us to ruin (and have been since 1776, I guess). 

We have more freedoms we never use than the rest of the world put together, made possible by everyone who has ever been an American ever since there's been an America to be from. George Bernard Shaw once noted "(p)atriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all others because you were born in it." But I don't believe we think ourselves superior because I'm not convinced sometimes we think at all. 

But if we did, and do, think, then Independence Day might be a good day to think a little harder about who we are and how we're going to pass what we have to our children, and to their children, as our parents did for us. 

We're a country whose Founders insisted our birthright included, "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." Maybe that doesn't make us 'better' than other nations, only different-but at least for this holiday, maybe we can all agree that different is better and sing an American tune in whatever key we choose.
-bill kenny