It’s our extra-special national birthday. There are those who made a difference so long ago to think about again. All there at the beginning of our grand story, our enduring national narrative.
Gathered at the birth of the American experiment in 1776 and the quest for self-government in an 18th century world full of entrenched monarchies.
Franklin. Washington. Jefferson, Adams. The wordsmith Tom Paine. Paul Revere. John Hancock, Patrick Henry, Alexander Hamilton.
Complicated folks. None subtle or featureless. White men with boldface names. Supermen for their time, the framework for which was ablaze in what would become the thousand-mile coastal U.S. separated from the British Empire.
Implementing perspectives of time and age, their back stories aside. Familiar patriots; all varnished. Some mythologized; changeless in history, even with its vicissitudes.
There was no time for cloudy illusions. A monumental colonial reckoning was at hand; a time to deal with the no longer unthinkable; notably freedom and liberty. Not so distant notions.
A time to also acknowledge 56 delegates to the tight-fisted Continental Congress with their varying levels of intellect; pledging their lives, fortunes and honor to the Declaration of Independence. Movers and shakers. All far from central casting.
Facing treason under British law, they did not fear enormous political change; while retaining their semblance of national character. In the late CBS broadcaster Edward R. Murrow’s words, “not fearful men.”
Firebrands. Working to create a new nation dedicated to the quest for independent life, that ‘pursuit of happiness’ and those ‘inalienable rights’ Jefferson wrote about, a few that never measured up. Comprising a document; a declaration hopefully still self-evident.
Wrestling with founding principles. Trying to assure the common good. Dreaming of establishing a middle-class meritocracy; mindful of realities with American slavery preserved and Indigenous sovereignties disregarded. Careful thinkers, after all. Not to be misunderstood.
We know how it turned out. At the end of what President Trump on April 28 called “a very difficult war,” America by 1781 was no longer a British subject; beginning to seek worldwide respect. Beyond colonies, reconsidering a confederated republic in favor of a nation state. had
America had cracked British imperial authority and then “shattered” it, says Fox News legal analyst Jonathan Turley.
Taking stock: questions, complexities
So how are we with our unruly but constitutional republic? A more perfect union? National character intact? Stronger than ever? With enlarged horizons? Maintaining global economic leadership with the dollar still leading the charge? Or becoming a pariah nation? Too self-satisfied, perhaps?
Is true prosperity just around the corner? Or is that political orthodoxy for election years?
Can we continue to keep the poor and street homeless living on the margins largely out of sight? Now that we remain concerned about rising prices of beef, coffee, electricity, housing, college and gasoline. Healthcare. Childcare. And airfare. As well as movie-going and a game at Fenway.
And what are we doing about new technology creating a dehumanized society shaped by billionaires, data scientists and media influencers; all a part of the Americana ecosystem. Worshipping things that erode the poetry within us.
Reasonable issues. With complexities. Especially with our enduring absurdities, legalized inequalities, retrograde politics, coarsening culture, stylized violence, school shootings, polarizing social media, the fentanyl scourge and any bigotry du jour. And limited attention spans, generational disconnects and pills to reduce anxieties on first dates.
So how do we “keep the music playing;” in the lyrics of Michel Legrand? As the long odds favor our continued push for a society that doesn’t know, or can’t sort out, what is real.
The answers we need, the troubadour Bob Dylan reminds us, “are blowin’ in the wind.” l.
Yet there is hope in a not-so-mundane world from which we can’t recede. The late Daniel Ellsberg of Pentagon Papers liberation noted: “Ordinary people have done extraordinary things.”
A time to celebrate
The Fourth celebrating will be fashionable for some. For others? Think ‘chicken-fried.’ Listen to Willie. Hit golf balls. Sail Buzzards. Hang out at Bassetts. Boil lobsters. Drink beer. Enjoy ice cream. Trek the Seashore. Beachcomb. Display bunting. Cheer parades. Watch the Pops. Plot a nighttime moon dance. Attend fireworks. Light a bonfire.
Marvel at USS Constitution’s Boston Harbor turnaround. Perhaps salute the crew of the new USS Massachusetts sub commissioned in March.
We’ll act star-spangled. Our birthday is not all box-office. How we celebrate will be corporatized. Pomp has its place. Best hopes for the work-in-progress USA.
Managing our international standing; as it remains on ‘high alert’ given history’s shifting tides. Acknowledging the consumer culture via our wallets. Wrestling with the transfer of generational wealth and the governmental threat to our legacy institutions.
Investigative reporter Sy Hersh says the U.S. is “an amazing country.”
But it is a cautionary tale for a nation to exist and prosper as a free and fair place, operating safely within the preferred Constitutional narrative with its basic premises. But all too often safeguarding a comfortable life for some in the profit-and-loss world order.
Let freedom ring
“The 4th’ gives us a lift. With a nod to Longfellow: it represents a moment “when it is daybreak in America.” A time when “we have all the time in the world” as Ray Charles sang it in one of the best Bond films.
E pluribus unum. A blended America. Societal rifts notwithstanding. Perhaps for 72 hours we can shove aside the national ‘who gets to be an American’ debate. Like we did with those Union Jacks 250 years ago.
An ever-changing America, reaching a celebratory milestone. A story still unfolding. Look at her. A great place. No need for soft-focus. “As certain as the sun rising in the east, true as it can be,” with thanks to “Beauty and the Beast” lyrics.
Flawed to some extents; but grand. Even with an often-disastrous foreign policy with its fitful, arrogant and fateful miscalculations for “Fortress America’ and its wasteful and erratic wars without reasonable endings, causing rueful legacies in some chapters of what we’ve become.
Wars without end with no granular review. Seemingly default decisions. Unwinnable conflicts. Strategic misfires. Misjudgments galore. So, America knows broken heartedness, misery, sadness and confusion as a result.
Russian writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn from exile at Cavendish, Vt., in 1983, urged us to avoid “the mistakes and calamities” that too many nations make and forever regret.
Yet no need for requiems. Our tapestry arguably may be fading. But it is durable. With safeguards and protections in place. Especially regarding domestic tranquility and security. Our defense. Too illusory? The nights would be too long to think otherwise.
We’re as a nation are perhaps getting creakier. Too easily irritated. We may not always dazzle, but we are still a shining light. Part of “the magic in the making,” to lift a line from Andrew Lloyd Webber.
Setbacks? We’ll have them. But as always, we’ll move on. We’ll follow the sun.
So, Happy Fourth! We’re in a narrative as old as time with many chapters, some sublime, all hopefully without end. Let freedom ring. Crank the volume, sweet America!
Laissez les bon temps rouler.
Oh boy!
Paul Gately is a former Bourne Courier editor and trustee of the Jonathan Bourne Public Library.
