I have not always agreed with the government or the president of the U.S., but I've never felt fearful in this way about the future of the country. What I'm feeling these days is a different fear than I felt in the waning days of the Cold War. We didn't know it was the waning days, and I spent my young adulthood expecting a nuclear war.
These days, I'm more fearful that it's 1939, and I'm living in Poland or Austria, and I don't want to believe the dark days that are on the way.
It's good to remember that we've been in dark times before. The period leading up to the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776 was a dark one, as Thomas Jefferson lists in the document.
The war for independence was another dark period. I'm guessing that many people got the same sort of sanitized history lessons that I did in school: scrappy colonies fight against the British Empire, right is on their side, and might doesn't matter. Most of my history teachers in grades K-12 rarely mentioned the human cost.
Consider the Civil War, another dark time. People who declare that the nation has never been more divided should go back and read about this time period and the amount of lives lost and shattered in the U.S. Civil War.
Today, we are likely to hear lots of people blustering about the 4th of July celebration in the nation's capitol. I'm a bit aghast at the cost of the plans, but I used to live in the D.C. area, and there was always something to be upset about. I remember one year when there was much discussion of the musical groups allowed to play. I prefer the Beach Boys to Wayne Newton, but there were plenty of crowds that year who turned out to hear Wayne Newton.
A few years later, my dad and I decided to make the trek to the Mall, when my sister and mother were out of town at a Lutheran youth gathering. I remember hearing Katrina and the Waves; the Beach Boys did play that year, but they were mostly drowned out by fireworks.
I don't have those pictures digitized, but I'll post this much more recent picture of my dad and me:
When I visited my mom and dad in January, we went to the new education center at Yorktown, Virginia--what a great facility. Most of the displays taught the history of the colonial time period and the Revolutionary War. They even had some live educators.
The above picture was part of an educational table that taught us about the different uniforms of soldiers. I'm dressed the way a colonist soldier would be dressed, in a shirt made out of hemp fibers. My dad is wearing the coat of a British officer.
I have always been amazed that the rowdy colonists could pull off this defeat of the greatest empire in the world at the time. I don't think it's only that they were fighting on their home territory that helped them win. Plenty of people fight to defend their homes and don't win.
My reading of history has always taught me that the unexpected might happen--and yet, it often doesn't.
So this year, as we celebrate the 4th of July with tanks rumbling through the nation's capitol, I'll find comfort in the fact that when there's been fighting needed to protect the ideals that Thomas Jefferson articulated with the Declaration of Independence, citizens and institutions have risen to the task. Not all of them and not always--but so far, the rights enshrined in the Constitution are standing, at least for U.S. citizens. While I do think those rights should be extended to all, I understand how others have come to different conclusions.
For all attempts to shred the Constitution, we've been knitting it back together again. May we continue to do so.
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