I know many other people, liberals and conservatives alike, who have a pit in their stomach like me when it comes to celebrating the fourth. One of my favorite authors who I KNOW is a Republican because she has talked about it and is also sounding the alarm.
Some of us are actively sitting out on celebrations.
Because we don’t feel so merry.
Some would call us out as non-patriotic.
The United States we are living in is and always has been a grand experiment. It always has been. It is meant to be a living, breathing thing, not mired in the past as some would have us be.
We are patriotic enough to be fearful of the overreach by the Supreme Court, egged on by the dark money and not-so-dark money that has been flowing their way. Easier now that they ruled that bribes can happen AFTER verdicts. Handy, that.
We are patriotic enough to embrace change.
We are patriotic enough to cheer on those who are scrabbling, desperate for that change.
What we have to ask those who cleave so hard to the past what they are afraid of?
Because this smacks of fear to me. Afraid of the not like us, afraid of the other religions, even though this country was founded on religious freedoms. Afraid of the different. Afraid of things they don’t understand.
What they don’t know is that we would teach them not to be afraid.
Because they are hurting us with every law declaring the president can basically rule as a king as long as he is acting within official presidential duties. And what are official duties? Whatever they tell us or the president regards them. No matter if it is to deny a free and fair election and try to subvert the will of the people. Apparently, insurrection is within official duties.
Walt Kelly and his comic strip “Pogo” said it best.
We have met the enemy and he is us. I know it was a strip about littering and pollution and I could write about that too.
Speak up when they are against you and making it harder for you to vote.
Call out instances of cheating and stacking the courts.
Call a lie a lie.
Call an insurrection an attempted coup.
Fight like hell against those who want to drag the country back, kicking and screaming to a time they deem to be original.
Original to who?
The white men who owned other people and called them slaves.
Or the white men who fought to free themselves from tyranny just to foist it on the slaves.
Or the white men who left the faraway country and came to America to escape religious persecution.
By their court, women have been stripped of dominion over their own bodies.
By their court, what is feared can be ruled and legislated against. Even if it is the torture of babies who are not meant to live outside the womb. Ask a parent who has had to watch the minutes-long “life” their child endured before nature took over. Was that a peaceful death? Or did it look tortuous? More to the point, did their child die in pain?
By their court, the president has the powers of a king.
Please vote.
I am a patriot. Not only because I signed and swore my oath as an Air Force Reserve cadet at age 18.
I believe in this country and its people.
Even if it is hard at this particular moment.
This has been a dispatch from the healthcare front,
Kate
Dispatches from the Evening Shift 