The Last Independence Day
American Twilight
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Yesterday I cancelled all my plans and took the subway to Randall Island, then walked across the bridge to Astoria in Queens, then down to Greenpoint in Brooklyn, as close to the East River as the roads would allow me. The trip was about 10 miles.
All along the river: thousands of people from all over the world, celebrating the Fourth of July. I must have heard a dozen languages spoken as I worked my way down the East River. Families BBQing, kids running around with sparklers or playing those mysterious made-up games kids play. Adults drinking and laughing. Playing music from everywhere.
I saw an old Muslim couple sitting next to each other looking out at the water, blissfully happy together. A hundred feet away, people at an outdoor restaurant dancing to American pop. A little ways behind me, a huge cookout on a basketball court with rap music blasting.
Anyone can be an American. It's what I love about this country. We are so young, we only go back 12 generations, with the exception of indigenous people we are all from somewhere else not so long ago.
If Biden doesn't drop out, Trump will win the election. If by some miracle Trump loses this election, the Supreme Court time bomb will continue to tick. From King George to King Whoever in 12 generations. We could have grown up to be something different, but we didn't.
It's very popular to hate America and there are valid reasons to hate it. We have done and continue to do bad things, our flag is streaked red for a reason. We were founded as a slave nation, we committed genocide against the people who lived here before us. But there is a spark here too: a dream of something better. Boldness, dynamism, a willingness to try. This idea of self-determinism, of meritocracy, of everyone having a shot at the good life, free to be whoever we want to be. We have never lived up to our ideals, but our ideals are as beautiful as anything I can imagine.
I am watching the country that I love kill itself.
A democratic republic cannot work when the people no longer want self-governance. When people demand that the press become a propaganda arm, when people demand a strongman and a savior.
There will be other Independence Day celebrations, but we will not be celebrating the America I love. It will be something else, and all I can do is pray that we hurt only ourselves and do not use our incredible power to become the most evil empire this world has ever known.
People accuse me of enjoying this chaos. It's good for business, I clearly love writing about it. It does not matter what they think, my emotions are not up for debate and there's no point in attempting to convince anyone how deeply I am grieving.
I am an American. I am a patriot -- the real kind, not the MAGA kind. My mother can trace her lineage back to the Mayflower. My father chose this country; he decided to become an American
It's a beautiful place. I hope people realize just how beautiful it was, someday
I'm sorry you're in a pessimistic place, and God knows you've got plenty of reason and you're entitled. But consider what's been happening elsewhere in the world. The UK just voted the Conservative party out of power for the first time in 14 years—and they're the party of austerity and Brexit. Macron called a snap election in France in a big roll of the dice to brush back the hard right, and the leftists formed a coalition and fucking won. Everybody thought Macron was nuts. And, while we're at it, India dealt Modi a setback a month ago. They didn't put him out of power, but they denied him a majority and left him hobbled a bit. Iran elected the most moderate candidate out the mullah-approved batch. Put that together with the 2022 "red wave" that wasn't and the off-year upsets that defied polls, and, you know, there's hope. I like to believe there are lot of wives who don't talk about Roe v. Wade in front of their husbands, but are planning revenge in the privacy of the voting booth. Folks who aren't on board with Christian Nationalism, but aren't open about it because their circle is on board. Sometimes people, writ large, are better and more empathetic than they appear.
My leftist son sometimes questions why I raised him to be an old fashioned patriot, the kind you are. If he wasn't, he'd leave and start over somewhere else, rather than staying and fighting the encroaching evil. It's disheartening to think that the lesser narcissism of Joe Biden will deliver the country to the greater narcissism of Donald Trump.
I'm enough of an optimist to think the promise of America can be brought back, even after a Trump victory. The ideals in the Declaration of Independence are still universal, even if they have never been fulfilled. Most people will go about their business and learn to live with the new masters, but there will always be a few who can't abide the new feudalism. They will organize and fight for a rebirth of real democracy. I have faith that eventually the oligarchs will fall. Unfortunately, the time required for a rebirth of democracy will be measured in generations, not election cycles.