July 4th – A Fairy Tale?

Is July 4th, our Independence Day, a holiday we all still celebrate together as Americans? Or is it now just a fairy tale with fireworks as entertainment for the young, and no longer any unifying meaning?  Some days, I’m not sure I want to know the answer. 

I remember the celebrations of my youth in Ottawa, Illinois. On the evening of the 4th, Mom and dad loaded my sisters and me into the car and drove us to the high school parking lot.  We kids ran around looking for friends until it grew dark and we rejoined Mom and Dad for the fireworks. They would launch out over the river and put on quite a show. Ottawa, Illinois had only 18,000 people then, but the show was always first class. We’d “Oooohhh!” And “Ahhhh!” with each launch. The grand finale was always amazing, at least to us little kids.

Overseas in the Army in the ‘80s, there was usually a cookout at someone’s house. A bit of America in Germany – no fireworks, but a gathering of fellowship and celebration. We shared the common cause of defending America and that seemed enough. 

In the ensuing decades, Cathy and I celebrated the 4th with cookouts, visits with friends, and the occasional firework display. It was always a good time. 

Over the past decade, things have devolved. 

Six years ago, in 2018 I published a blog about celebrating the 4th of July in 1976, our country’s 200th anniversary (you can find a link to the blog in the Addendum). Here’s a partial extraction from the end of the blog:

“I’ve been thinking about that evening in 1976 as our Independence Day celebration approaches this year (2018). The country went through a rough patch in the early 1970s leading up to our 200th birthday. Vietnam, anti war protests, Kent State, Nixon and Watergate, race issues, the assassination attempts on Ford, and multiple drug overdoses, to name just a few of the issues of the day. And yet, to me on that Fourth of July, it felt like we were all in one boat pulling together. We weren’t Republicans or Democrats, liberals or conservatives, young or old, black or white. We were just Americans, and it seemed our differences were set aside, at least for that night.

Which brings me back to this year’s Fourth of July. It appears we are less united now and I sometimes wonder if we can bridge our differences any more. We have a seventeen-year war, a drug crisis, race issues, and politicians, some more than others, who divide us. Hatred grows. I know we have gone through similar periods in our nation’s history, but online media accelerates and exasperates the situation. I try and think what the future might hold for this great country of ours, and the answer isn’t always clear.”

If anything, our divisions are worse now than they were only six years ago. 1976 itself seems positively quaint.  We have divided into our camps with the extremists pulling us further apart. Democrats are evidently communists, while Republicans are fascists. It appears we have little or no room for compromise. 

I texted back and forth with my old friends Howard and Mark about this. We are all at various places on the political spectrum and often argue/discuss politics. The conversation was wide-ranging and we talked about many things, including our imperfect union:  

• The fact that if you were a black slave at the founding of the country you were worth only 3/5 of a person with no rights at all. Given that, why wouldn’t Juneteenth be an important holiday?  
• Our Constitution doesn’t mention God at all and yet many Christian Nationalists are trying to make this country a “Christian Nation”.
• Is there any holiday this diverse country can universally celebrate? More than a small number of citizens have adopted a mindset of victimhood and embrace presentism. 

We came to no conclusions. Howard made the comment “I think July 4th is, on the surface, a very uncontroversial holiday, because everyone looks at it through the filter of their own politics.  If you want to barbecue, it’s a great holiday. If you want to look at the deeper meaning of the day, I think we have a lot of work ahead of us.”  Mark had a great suggestion – “I think we should adopt an entirely new holiday on a specific date not associated with anything, where we gather with people of opposite political persuasions to discuss potential areas of compromise and agreement.”  A brilliant idea, but of course it will never happen. 

At times, I do see small signs of hope. My buddy Dave has a condo just above the Iwo Jima memorial. Every year he hosts a 4th of July party.  The view from his balcony is one of the very best in the entire Metro DC area to watch the fireworks. At the party are Republicans and Democrats, political true-believers and agnostics. It’s a great party and a helluva view of the fireworks. People have a good time, enjoy the food, libation and of course the fireworks. Politics aren’t discussed. The view of the fireworks over the monuments is so beautiful, it could almost convince you by itself that all is well with America.

I think both Republicans and Democrats love America, or think they do. They also often believe the other side must hate America, otherwise, why would they adopt the positions they have?

I have no answers for these questions. 

I was originally going to end the blog with the following paragraph:

If we can’t figure it out, I believe we will soon see the Grand Finale of America. Like the end of our fireworks display on the 4th, there will be a brilliant final scene, followed by darkness. Only in our case, the darkness won’t lift with the coming of dawn.

But, it felt too dark to me and I sat on it for a couple of days. I also talked with other friends.

We’ve had other tumultuous times in our history – the Civil War, the depression, McCarthyism, the 60s with Vietnam and racial strife to name a few. America has always managed to make it through. There have also been great moments of unity – World War II after Pearl Harbor, landing on the moon, our 200th birthday as a country, and the immediate aftermath of the 9-11 attack are a few examples in the last 100 years.

Those of you who know me, know I’m an optimist. I tend to see the good in situations and in people. In my heart, I think that optimism is also true for my view of our country. Whether Kennedy’s “City on a Hill”*, or George Bush’s “1,000 points of light”, America has largely been a beacon of hope for the world. Even today, with all of our issues people want to come to America, the land of opportunity.

Will we get through our current struggles? I hope and pray so. Maybe my “Grand Finale” mentioned previously is just one of a multitude of paths this country could take, and a low probability one at that. Still, I think it behooves all of us to do our part to ensure a better America, now and in the future.

I hope you enjoy your hotdogs and hamburgers this year, or whatever you are having to eat. If you can, take in the fireworks. Spend a few minutes thinking of our history and how we came to where we are as a country.  Maybe also spend a few minutes thinking what you could do to elevate America for all of us. As Woodie Guthrie so aptly sang, “This land was made for you and me.”

Addendum: 

• Here’s the blog from six years ago: Good Morning America, How Are You? It was dusk turning to dark on July 4th, 1976 and Washington DC’s Bicentennial fireworks would start at any moment. Cathy and I were stuck in traffic on the 14th Street Bridge over the Potomac. It looked like we weren’t going […] Continue here: https://mnhallblog.wordpress.com/2018/06/30/good-morning-america-how-are-you/
• Thanks as always to my old friends Mark and Howard for their friendship and thoughts. Maybe because we are all thinking people and have been friends since grade school, we can have more free-wheeling political conversations.
• Thanks to our niece, Ann McCambridge for supplying the photos of the 4th of July celebration in Ottawa from 2023.
• Thanks to my friends Janis Johnson and Jim Overdahl for the photos from Dave’s balcony at a previous 4th of July. Thanks also to Jim for his thoughts and input to this blog.
• * In JFK’s use of a shining city on a hill, he was talking about the new government he was forming in 1961 and said, “We must always consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill – the eyes of all people are upon us.” He reworked the phrase from John Winthrop, who In a famous 1630 sermon, used “shining city on a hill” in a reference to Boston