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WPCNR NEWS & COMMENT By John F. Bailey. June 30, 2018:
I am not going to the fireworks in White Plains New York USA.
There should be no fireworks anywhere in America Wednesday, July 4.
Because there is little to celebrate about America anymore.
What Americans used to celebrate on July 4 in the past no longer exists.
It is a memory, a once shining hope the world always looked to for inspiration.
That America is forever gone.
I miss it so.
We may never see that respect and admiration from the world again.
Our reputation for standing up for the good, the decent, and the just has been smeared and shattered by persons who should have known better.
America to the rescue no more. I was always proud of that.
Unselfish acceptance of persons in trouble coming to our shores to start a new life: the Irish, the Germans, the Italians, Latinos, Africans, Asians, Muslims– has been callously, proudly,viciously attacked by our “leaders.”
Both houses of congress and a mean-spirited selfish man have aroused hatred of the different, the oppressed, the persecuted, and the poor, in citizens who should know better.
There but for the grace of God go you and I, Mr. and Mrs. And Ms. America who collectively bear full responsibility for the death of the America Dream, by not paying attention, and buying into a line and a hate.
How quickly America’s heart hardened to stone.
Cruelty rationalized. Hate defended. Discrimination championed. Truth attacked.
That was never the American Way.
Two years is all it has taken.
A year of a media circus campaign followed by the nomination of “An American Strongman,” a man of the people champion who spoke of “Making America Great Again.” Possibly the first American Dictator.
The media carried and publicized dutifully the ranting of this man. Because he was good copy. “Everything is copy,” it has once been said. But no judgment was used. Nothing was censored. The media were putty in this man’s hands. Criticism was labled as fake news.
The man who condoned and popularized hatred of his opponents, who courted the cooperation of an enemy of America to influence his election, and who reveled in his denigration of women and the weak was elevated to an exulted level.
His opponent in the election underestimated him. She failed to grasp the visceral violence he aroused in voters—voters who only saw the promise of their personal getting even with their perceived tormentors and disregarding the premise of this very mastermind.
Half of the voters in the country ate his message up.
That horrendous campaign has been followed up with a march on American values that, like those before him: Mongols, Huns, Cossacks, Barbarians and Nazis rampaged across Europe with sword and violence.
The weapons today are microphones, videos, propaganda, slogans and big lies that play as convenient truths, executive orders laying waste to reason and morality in this nation, forsaking our friends of the past and uplifting the evil leaders of the world. And initiatives ineptly executed, inappropriate, and bungled because of the inability to manage.
I and you have seen eighteen months of dismantling rights taken for granted by Americans. Courts ruled by idealogues. Justices making rights-robbing decisions virtually monthly. Leaders in cabinet positions opposed to the missions of their agencies.
How great are we now?
The promise of America has been forever broken.
How great are we now?
It is embarrassing to be an American for what this neo-Nazi government is doing.
As fireworks explosions are prepared to celebrate a government that now rips children away from families at the border . Adequate records not even being kept. Are photographs being taken of the children already in custody with their parents? Who knows? Reporters have not even documented the process of what happens in the separations. Mayor De Blasio was not even informed of immigrant children being flown into New York City for placement.
Now America, look at you: America has “Children Concentration Camps.”
Look at you America, you now are going to test children’s DNA with the parents who brought them to make sure they are not “Fake children.”
America did not used to be afraid of children.
But hate was always under the surface that the premise of America had to always fight. Hate is always poised to raise its horror, its ugliness, its indifference to the suffering of others.
Slavery, the segregation of the South and the North (remember redlining?). Other than the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War, and the Cavalry revenge massacres at Wounded Knee and the Washita River, and Andrew Jackson’s Trail of Tears (the Cherokee Indian death march), and the burning of Atlanta, and Bloody Kansas, we have forgotten our humanity conveniently in favor of the easy emotion: hate.
Look at you, America: Religious freedom for all. No more. Muslims are being ostracized by travel bans.
In fact the clergy, the Christians in America, I call you out: What would Jesus say about your failure to take in strangers or your condoning (as a matter of faith for crying out loud!) Trump administration policies?
Look at you, America, how what you have built in 242 years has been ripped away.
Look at those fireworks, and this year they will represent an America flaming apart with hate.
Look at what it takes to be an American of the past now.
You are a drifter still believing in freedom and truth, justice and the American Way in your heart, mourning what America once was and is no more.
I remember not the country whose leadership has betrayed its country’s promise.
America has died in these last 18 months.
Its leadership has betrayed its war dead and veterans who fought for truth, justice and the American Way and the Pursuit of Happiness.
America, Look at you and remember what you once meant to millions.
The Stars and Stripes are no longer forever.
Old Glory is tattered, the white and red stripes wrinkled, ripped, furling asunder in the cruel winds of hate, in total disunity, no longer a whole flag. A hydra of hate, no longer proud.
The white stars falling out of the blue background lose their unity. Scatter to the four winds.
Lay a wreath on the flag.
Cancel the fireworks celebrations everywhere.
There is nothing to celebrate July 4.
But for those of us old Americans, who remember what America used to stand for, our work is just beginning.
We have a lot of work to do to make America the Greatest again, all over again.
Give us time, old friends.
You and I have to knit that Grand Old Flag back together again.
Stitch by stitch.
Vote by Vote.
