just sayin'. havin' one of those semesters where I'm thinkin' this PhD thing is overrated and waiting tables wasn't so bad. sigh. external indicators seem to be that all is going really well, but I just feel like I'm getting further and further in the weeds, and friends getting further and further away. sigh. keep going. keep going. keep going. end almost in sight. keep going.

On my drive to the magick city for patriotic birthday celebrations, I had some time to think about my cynicism and patriotism and my love/hate relationship with my country. About halfway here, fireworks started going off all over the place, and various versions of the Star Spangled Banner, the 1812 Overture (a favorite for fireworks), and half a dozen other patriotic songs could be heard from nearby cars and loudspeakers.

Here are a few thoughts that occurred to me (in no particular order):



-the 4th of July is a day to celebrate our ancestors and our history- it is a celebration of their courage to claim their place in the world, to decry injustice and to stand up for what they believed was right. No matter how you feel about the state of the world or the country today, that is always something to celebrate- and never something to be taken for granted or forgotten. We stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before us, and when we forget our history, we are doomed to repeat it. Those who stood up and were counted deserve to be remembered with great honors.



-even if we hate the current administration, every 4 years we have the opportunity to vote. Not everyone has always had that right. Too many people put their lives on the line for me to ever fail to exercise that hard-won right, although these days it is sometimes hard to tell if my vote will be counted, or counted only once, or for the person that I want, even if it's often a contest between the least of evils.



-even if the voting goes badly, there is a peaceful change over of power in our country- no military coups, no massacres or gunpoint takeovers. Our protests and political maneuvering are done without bloodshed.



-with all the current dangers to our system (circumventions of our civil rights, the creation of military powers inside of our own borders such as have never been seen before), the majority of citizens still retain more freedoms, rights and protections than most places in the world. Our police and fire forces may run amock sometimes or be underfunded, but when we need them, they usually have our backs, at least across most of this incredibly huge landscape. Our court systems, with all the flaws, still help maintain civil order, and acts of civil disobedience and protest may get you arrested, but will never get you sentenced to death or run over by tanks.



-it is easy to take for granted our way of life. The ease of getting in our car and driving somewhere- whether up the road or 4 days away; picking up a cell phone and calling a friend anywhere in the world- and having the money to pay for it because if I can't get a job in my field, the opportunity to flip burgers or serve coffee is always there for me; the opportunity and right to live anywhere in our country that I want; that we can decide to see a movie tonite, and if I can't afford to do that, there's always Blockbuster; that there are highways and gas stations with coca-cola and stale donuts running from coast to coast and border to border, no matter which direction you drive.



-that I can choose any line of work (mostly) or any field of study without having to justify myself to society or government officials.



It would be easy to become cynical about the strains put on our national identity, the threats to our rights, freedoms and protections, and it would be easy to say that I'm through with it and move somewhere else. I could be a visiting scholar or migrant worker in Chile (the world's oldest democracy), in England or South Africa or New Zealand or anywhere else I wanted to go, really. But democracy is founded on the principle of many voices, and there is strength in numbers. So, if those of us who are capable of raising our voices and claiming the power that we have in this nation (thru whatever just or unjust allocations of it may exist) walk away, who will remain to speak for those who cannot?

So even if I have to go away for a time to be a better citizen of my country, even if I have to step away in order to learn what must be done, I owe it to my ancestors who stood up for what they believed was right, or died refusing to bend their knee, and to the people to either side of me wherever I stand on our soil to try to make this country into a better place- for ourselves, for our children, and for those who will look back at their ancestors a dozen generations from now and consider the fireworks and the music and the actions of those who dared to stand and be counted.

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