Love Letter to the USA #2: I remember being proud
Through good times and bad, I had faith in our leaders and our country
We know the day the United States of America was born … July 4, 1776 ... but we do not know the day it will die. While it still lives … and while I am still here to care about it … I will write these love letters on the 17th of each month.
I remember being proud to wear my “I like Ike” button. I didn’t know what it was all about but it rhymed and made me feel grown up to wear it. Eisenhower was the president of my childhood and I remember seriously debating whether or not Hawaii and Alaska should become states.
I remember sitting in a classroom listening to a radio broadcasting the drama of the Cuban Missile Crisis and feeling proud of our heroic young president who saved the day.
The devastating news of the assassination of that same president is a day most of us alive then will mourn forever. But, later, how proud I was of LBJ when he picked up the mantle of the presidency and carried forward so much of JFK’s work. My ideals were born in that Camelot of possibility.
When a teacher in the former USSR told me that American soldiers dropped winter coats to her village after WWII, it made me proud to know that we had provided so much humanitarian aid and resources to rebuild Europe and Japan.
I thought we were a generous and heroic people that would live forever.
In the years after that I remember being happy when my candidates for president won and disappointed when they lost. However, I felt proud that regardless of the party of the winning candidate, our country always carried on, making decisions about our future based on the structure created in our Constitution so long ago. I knew other civilizations had died but I thought we had found the magic formula.
While I believed that Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan were “wrong” wars, I was proud of the men and women who served and I trusted that our leaders were acting on information I did not understand.
Over the years, as I learned more about our history, I was often reminded that a democratic country is the sum of its all-too-human citizens, leaders, and systems. While I still feel proud of so much of what we’ve accomplished and the ideals we have strived for, many of our actions not only do not make me proud, they make me weep for our ignorance and ignobility.
And, now we are here in this time, when a leader and his entire party has decided that our Constitution, our guidelines and rule book, is expendable when they don’t like what it says. Plus, the checks and balances built up over the years are being brushed away like an annoying mosquito.
I find myself mourning things I barely knew existed, but, somehow felt proud that they did … Voice of America, the Kennedy Center, aid programs around the world, school lunches, veterans programs, suicide hot lines, presumed fair treatment in employment transactions, the respect of other countries, and so many things that I thought were solid but are now popping like soap bubbles in a hot sun.
That long ago naive child never worried about a stable world … will the children of our future have the same gift? The thought of what they might face makes me ache for them and for all of us.
It also makes me determined to play a part in resisting the destruction of all that we have created. We are Americans and we have overcome challenges before … a civil war, depressions, recessions, robber barons, world wars, corruption, 9/11, horrible climate disasters, COVID, bad decisions like stealing land from the indigenous, slavery, internment camps, segregation … we overcame all of those because we worked together as a country and had mostly good leadership.
This is our time to stand up, speak out, to believe in what we can do together and continue to build a country of the people, by the people, for the people. We are those people and we do not have to bow to wannabe dictators or kings.
My mantra has become: no one can do everything; everyone can do something.
Yep; it's a sad time for our country. Historians will look back on this period and wonder why we let it happen.
I've been thinking a lot about this and talking with mostly working class people about what we can do. The only thing i can think of is to stop paying federal income taxes on the grounds of Conscientious Objection to the war being waged on our country by billionaire plutocrats. While they demolish the government and give themselves every tax loophole and tax break imaginable, the load is on the backs of the struggling remains of the middle class. So what if we all just stopped paying in to a system that is rigged? The way DOGE is gutting the federal government and ignoring court orders, I doubt they could do a whole lot about this. And if this is the hill we will die on anyway, we may as well use our voices in the only way that will get their attention: collectively divest from the power banks and their subsidiaries, and stop paying federal income taxes.
Sorry. This will be long. I'm not telling anyone what to do but this is what I aim to do and keep doing:
Shop small businesses, preferably local mom and pop businesses. Bank at State banks or local credit unions (corporations are taking over credit unions as well). Pay cash or check wherever and whenever possible. Do not use credit or debit cards and if local businesses start telling you that they don't take cash or check, find one that will. The plan is to force us into central digital banking currency. (CDBC) - DO NOT COMPLY. If you are too poor to completely boycott places like walmart and amazon (their workers have to eat, too!). then boycott buying them on specific no buy days targeting them. Try NOT to use QR codes - that is a trap to help hasten a cashless society. Don't fall for convenience over looking at long term impacts of those conveniences.
Grow food and herbs. Learn about herbs, homeopathics, Chinese Medicine. Share garden space with those who don't have it. Trade with (organic) farmers for other goods or better yet, buy stuff from them with cash. Write or petition local farm centers and hardware stores to stop carrying the worst of the poisonous herbicides and pesticides. Learn about natural means and support Nature's way of dealing with pests. Learn medicinal weeds and harvest and process them for medicine and healing.
Look forfunctional medicine doctors, naturopaths, homeopaths, etc who will also honor alternatives, even if you have to pay out of pocket rather than use your (corrupt) insurance company.
Some will support midterm elections and ones coming sooner than that, with the idea that retaking the majority in congress will actually do something to stop the criminality and grift. Some will give money to campaigns. That may be effective... I think it's way beyond that. But since it's up to us, 20 bucks toward someone who may have integrity is a much better investment than buying useless junk from slave states..
Social media and broswers are the next thing> Try to find something that the billionaire cartel don't own. Divest from all things Google - which will seriously impact all of our lives because Peter Thiel and cronies have such a huge hold on us all - yahoo, AOL, Instagram, facebook, youtube, all chromium based browsers, and many others too lengthy to list - It's hard to keep track of them all. But the more we know about them and how to avoid using them, the better.
It all falls on us, true. Americans have, in general, become lazy in thinking a 'leader' or Jesus will take care of us. No. God helps those who help themselves and others. More of us feel defeated, downtrodden, hopeless or worse, apathetic. Don't give the brutality purchase in your consciousness by giving up - that's what they want!
Take care of your local community and each other. Keep talking to and listening to people who are different from us, as well as similar. Agree to disagree without attacking them. Take the high road but do not be silenced by bullying and ignorance and hate. We are all victims of the lies - some more than other. Read books again. Write again. Use screens less for the doom and more for inspiration. Study another language. Do whatever your heart yearns for you to do. Keep learning. Keep creating in the face of it all. I vow to, even if it means all I have is a backpack and cardboard boxes and a pencil to write with and a knife to sharpen it.
I believe everything is made up of energy. The narcissist(s) everyone is giving their undivided attention and stress cortisol to, is basking in the glow of our collective angst and attention. This makes a small, mean person feel big - but it's all a decoy. These persons are empty inside - of empathy. Divest from THEM. (but wish them peace). This collective fear feeds that energy and grows it.
For me, this is most important: Divest from all mainstream news. Turn it off! IF you MUST, limit it to weekly recaps and set a time limit. There are plenty of journalists with integrity - Search for investigative journalists and historians like Thom Hartmann, Chris Hedges, Lee Camp, Heather Cox Richardson, Etc - people who've been censored, thrown off billionaire-owned platforms and still will not be silenced.
I live in an apartment on a busy street. Lately I have taken to making cardboard signs with things I want to say, You can use old election signs, the kind that you stick in the ground. Cover the plastic with a tarpaper envelope that you staple on for a decent fit (weather impervious). Use house paint to print your message. Red paint on black is especially effective. Sell or give a little home grown produce to your neighbors or those less fortunate.
Joyce, thank you for writing and for committing your heart to the work at hand. I was proud of Ike and Nixon too - despite Watergate, he gave us all the environmental protections that are now being gutted. So much for the Republican party loyalty! We must remember that there are no real parties anymore in the duopoly - it's the new feudalism. We can expose the thugs and remind people we're more alike than different when it comes to making a stand against the real profiteers and controllers.
I have more ideas, but this is already overly long.