Some Thoughts On a 250th Birthday
“The revolution will not be televised
The revolution will not be brought to you
By Xerox in four parts without commercial interruptions
The revolution will not show you pictures of Nixon blowing a bugle
And leading a charge by John Mitchell, General Abrams, and Spiro Agnew
To eat hog maws confiscated from a Harlem sanctuary
The revolution will not be televised.”
-Gil Scott-Heron, “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”
This 4th of July, the President and Congress have just agreed to deprive millions of their health care and potentially cause over 300 rural hospitals to close, just to give more money to millionaires and a paramilitary force, already notorious for its blunt, adolescent cruelty, accountable only to the President and his advisors. Right now, too, merchandise is being sold to commemorate a concentration camp built in a Floridan swamp, and the President mulls over, Commodus-like, the possibility of hosting Ultimate Fighter bouts on White House grounds.
I thought I’d be scared, if things ever got this bad and dumb and weird. Well, I am scared, for the people being targeted by ICE, and for my cousin, who is disabled, lives in a rural area, and depends on regular medical checkups and physical therapy appointments. I have no idea if she’ll be affected by the now-enacted cuts, and I am afraid to ask. But I don’t have any fear for myself anymore. Really, I’m just tired.
Another thing that surprises me is that, in this moment, I’m strangely more patriotic than I ever have been. Maybe “patriotic” isn’t the right word, but I do feel a pride tinged with sadness when I consider what this country really should be about and the reality crashing against it: a sous chef who found a life and a city he loved in Los Angeles but is returning to Mexico out of fear and wanting to leave this country on his own terms instead of being forcibly deported; the son of a refugee expelled from his country by a dictatorship becoming the likely mayor of one of the most famous cities on Earth, but is being singled out and targeted by the President and even members of his own political party; and people pouring out across the country to protest the government, even if their supposed representatives and the media didn’t care.
It’s enough to move me to say God bless America, but only those people and those parts of it.