I wasn’t going to write today. Sundays are my sacred writing days, not Saturdays. But I made a mistake this morning. It was a common mistake—a mistake that I bet you’ve made before. I clicked on the “Trending” tab on Twitter. Today is July 4th and some of Twitter’s trends include “FvckTheFourth” and “What Are You Celebrating”. The former sounds like something a middle school student would write in his social studies notebook. The latter, well, at least it poses a question.
So, what the fuck are you celebrating? Why all the fireworks and liquor? All these festivities for a document written by a man who held more than 600 slaves? We are a country built on slaves and Native American genocide (roughly 90% of native deaths came from unintentional disease). Two hundred years after the declaration was signed we still have police brutality, massive income inequality, and incompetent leadership. Put the sparklers away.
“Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time”.
I’m going to take Winston Churchill’s quote above and modify it slightly. The modified version is “Indeed it has been said that America is the worst country except for all those other countries that have been tried”.
The question that needs to be asked is—should you celebrate something that is flawed? If you have ever loved someone, then you know the answer. You love them despite their flaws, and maybe even because of some of them, and if you love them then by definition you are grateful for them. Why can’t that be true of the country you live in?
Flawed as America may be, it could be worse. There’s a reason why 1 million immigrants move to the US every year (links to statistics will be at the bottom). Most of these immigrants come from India, Mexico, China, and Cuba for opportunity or for safety. A Mexican immigrant may decide to move to America to flee from the most violent city in the world, Tijuana, where there was 2,640 homicides in 2018. A Chinese immigrant may move to America to get away from communist China, where hundreds of thousands of Muslims are held in Xinjiang “re-education” camps. Or maybe they come from 1 of the are 13 countries where being homosexual is punishable by death.
America has a history of racism and colonialism. 244 years of imperfection. But things are getting better.
Whenever someone complains about the way things are today, I ask them if they think they have a harder life than their grandparents did? Would you switch places with them if you could? The answer is almost always “no”.
Andrew Carnegie, the richest man in 1900, was worth about $14.6 billion dollars in today’s money. Carnegie, with all of his wealth, could not buy an iPhone. Carnegie had no access to: antibiotics, washing machines, air conditioning, microwaves, Frisbees, birth-control pills, cardiac pacemakers, calculators, or contact lenses. What good is 14 billion dollars if you can’t trip on LSD or buy a bidet.
Every race and gender has access to these things today in America. Everyone has the right to vote. Everyone has the ability to become a leader. The lights work. We have the internet and airplanes. There isn’t mass famine or wars on the home front. You are allowed to hold whatever views you want without being sent to a camp. You can love whoever you want without being stoned to death.
You can be grateful for what’s been accomplished, while also advocating for change. They aren’t mutually exclusive. To say “America is flawed, therefore I shouldn’t be grateful to live here” is a ridiculous statement. The person who says that has zero gratitude for what has been accomplished—a spoiled child who doesn’t understand how much worse things can be.
United States Immigration Statistics: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/06/17/key-findings-about-u-s-immigrants/ Most Dangerous Cities in the World: https://www.usatoday.com/picture-gallery/travel/news/2019/07/24/most-dangerous-cities-world-tijuana-caracas-cape-town/1813211001/ China’s Xinjiang Camps: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_re-education_camps Places Where Homosexuality is Punishable by Death: https://www.usatoday.com/picture-gallery/life/2019/06/13/iran-yemen-among-countries-where-being-gay-is-punishable-by-death/39574925/
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