A DAY OF MOURNING FOR PARADISE LOST

Today is the Fourth of July. There is no more American holiday.  It is a day of which I have fond memories from my childhood, which, even back then, filled me with both the festive air of a summer holiday, and a patriotic pride at its deeper meaning. That day when American patriots rebelled against the oppression of colonialism and began spilling their blood for the initiation of a bold new experiment in democracy, justice and the rights of the individual.

Today on my FB feed, I published a picture of a marble slab on which the fate of the fifty-six signers of the Declaration of Independence is recounted. So strong was their belief in the new nation that they were founding through bloody revolution that they pledged everything they were and everything they had to the defense of their cause.

And, indeed, it was not an idle vow. Nine died in the ensuing Revolutionary War. Five were captured and imprisoned. The wives and children of some of them were abused, killed, or left penniless and destitute. A dozen of these first patriots had their homes burned to the ground. Seventeen lost everything they owned. But not one of them defected from their pledge to fight for and build a new, free, and democratic nation.

It is a devastating fact that not a single Republican member of Congress, cabinet member or conservative majority Supreme Court justice is willing to stand up for those founding values and stop the headlong fall into tyranny that the United States of America is experiencing as we speak. It is even more shameful that they excuse, embrace, or fail to recognize their responsibility for delivering the nation into the hands of a clearly recognizable authoritarian, who is lawless, cruel and unrelenting. 

I would like to be able to rediscover that swelling feeling of my youth, those times when I, like most other Americans, believed that, despite its flaws and human errors, ours was an unshakable system of laws and guarantees that, because of our carefully preserved regimen of checks and balances, was immune to tyrants and opposed to fascism, totalitarianism, and authoritarianism in all of their forms. Indeed, our own fathers had fought, and bled, and died on foreign soil to defend that principle, to not only enjoy our democratic system at home, but also to defend other democracies that fascism had placed at imminent risk.

We had so much to be proud of back then, even despite the darker chapters in our history. We were, after all, truly, the land of the free and the home of the brave. We were a nation of people born into a legacy of freedom and democracy that was the greatest of its kind in world history, and for the preservation of which, so many before us had fought, made supreme and sacred sacrifices, and often died in the process.

What our elected representatives are not only allowing to happen, but are actively supporting and defending, spits on the graves of those patriots, dishonors the sacrifices of our own fathers and grandfathers for the cause of freedom and democracy, and makes a grotesque mockery of American patriotism, and of the celebration of this most sacred of all American holidays.

Yes, I would like nothing better than to feel moved, to feel the swelling pride of being an American in my breast once more, and to celebrate this day with true joy in my heart and pride in that heritage.

But I cannot. I am in mourning today, and feel sad, exhausted and angry. I have a knot in my throat and bitter rage in my heart.

And it is made worse because these are no longer my times. I am nearing the end of the trail, and all I can do is issue warnings daily on what I’m seeing and what my long professional experience with authoritarian regimes has taught me about them. All I can do is issue these daily admonishments, and hope that even a handful of people will be inspired to shrug off the general lethargy that I now observe every day, and, perhaps, be moved to stand up and fight. Because the legacy that is being allowed to dwindle away is worth fighting for. Nothing should hold more value in the hearts of true American patriots.