Independence Day in a land of confusion
It was the worst of times. It was the weirdest of times. It was a season of sickness and shouting, of defiance and tension, of industrial-strength falsehood and spin. It was a moment of ugliness and deep injustice — and perhaps, too, a moment when the chance for justice felt nearer than ever before.
On Independence Day, we Americans — if there is in fact a “we” in American life — celebrate the anniversary of a time when a lot of people, feeling really angry and scared, decided to do something about it that changed the world forever. This year, we mark that event in a year when a lot of people are feeling really angry and scared. Some of them are trying to do something about it, hoping it will change the world forever.
COVID-19 resurgent in 40 of 50 states. The death of George Floyd, the fight for racial justice and the reactions against it. The fractious politics of masks. A national conversation — loud, enraged and anguished — about the place that a history blemished by ugliness should hold in the present. An uneven president embraced by millions and despised by millions. And superimposed over it all: a sure-to-be-chaotic election season that has only just begun.
Irritable, overstressed, buffeted by invisible forces and just plain worn out, the United States of America on its 244th birthday is a land of confusion.
“At this moment, we are a country profoundly at odds with our own history. We’re seething,” said historian Ted Widmer, author of Lincoln on the Verge, which chronicles the 16th president’s journey to his 1861 inauguration weeks before the Civil War began.
“There’s this feeling that there are multiple versions of a country that is really supposed to be one country,” Widmer said. “People are finding it hard to figure out which America is going to survive over the other one.”
Last week, the Pew Research Center found only 12 percent of Americans satisfied with the way things are going in the country — down from 31 percent in April, which was already a month into the coronavirus pandemic. The poll was conducted June 16-22 among 4,708 adults, most of them registered voters.
This country has always contained multiple versions of itself. That’s part of what’s held it together — e pluribus unum, or “out of many, one” — but also part of what’s driving today’s unraveling. One group’s story of America — a story of triumph and exceptionalism and always prevailing — is very different from that of others, which include narratives of abuse, subjugation and slavery.
Many things make this particular Fourth of July different, though.
It comes after millions of Americans have been forced to marinate in their own juices for months, stuck at home, in some cases losing their jobs, being economically stressed, fearing a horrifying death, feeling both trapped and unable to access the “normal” life they remember.
This July 4, on a holiday that celebrates the dawn of the United States, recent weeks’ protests hint at an important question: How do you grill burgers and set off flag-colored fireworks but not engage with the actual racial history of the nation and its birth?
There are those who say: Put it aside for the day and just celebrate what the country means — American ideals of equality. But an increasing number of voices are insisting the discussion has been put aside for far too long.
To Fred L. Johnson III, a U.S. historian at Hope College in Michigan who studies slavery, race and the Civil War, the notion of marking Independence Day without digging into what it means — including the compromises the founders made to appease the pro-slavery South — is ludicrous.
“The very things they were complaining that the British were doing to them, they were doing the same thing — oppression — to Black people early on,” he said.
“Being an American citizen is like having a relationship,” Johnson said. “If all you can do is accept the good parts of the relationship and can’t deal with the hard stuff, I question the sincerity of your relationship. We need to look at the warts, the dark spots and all.”