Thursday, July 4, 2019

HAVE A SAFE AND HAPPY FOURTH, 243 AND COUNTING...

“My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right;
(These are times that try men (and women's) souls. But this country has survived wars, revolts, and military attacks and will so again. We are facing a humanitarian crisis along our southern border, the drums of war can be heard all over the world, and we have a president who thinks the glory and pomp of democracy is something to hold over people's heads like a bludgeon.

Nonetheless, we all believe we live in the greatest country in the world. And if our forefathers hadn't believed it, they wouldn't have come. We include our annual tribute to this nation below. Let's set it right.)

American Tune
Lyrics by Paul Simon
Music by JS Bach

Many's the time I've been mistaken, and many times confused
And I've often felt forsaken, and certainly misused.
But it's all right, it's all right, I'm just weary to my bones
Still, you don't expect to be bright and Bon Vivant
So far away from home, so far away from home.

By Juan Montoya
The American Republic and its inhabitants have seen turmoil from its very inception. When the Pilgrim colonists landed on Plymouth Rock and left the Mayflower, they were a sect of religious believers that were not content (and not very well liked) in their native England.

Dissatisfied with their situation, they sailed off to the new English colony that would eventually become the United States. Interestingly, the sect also had its disillusioned members who splintered off and formed new states away from the core colony because they complained of...religious intolerance.


The lot of the Native American under these new settlers was not a good one. The natives were not immune to the Old World diseases, and those who didn't succumb to the pestilences of small pox and other contagious illnesses were driven from their lands or simply slaughtered to drive them away from the Christian settlements. A sort of low-level intensity war raged for years.

The goodwill extended the new comers by the naive natives at the first Thanksgiving that helped them survive in the Brave New world was badly repaid with a strange sort of return.

It would result, eventually, in the natives being decimated, dispossessed of their ancestral homelands and relegated to a system of dependence on their conquerors. What if the natives had had an immigration service to filter out the newcomers?

I don't know a soul who's not been battered
Don't have a friend who feels at ease
Don't know a dream that's not been shattered
Or driven to it's knees. 
But it's all right, all right, We've lived so well so long
Still, when I think of the road we're traveling on,
I wonder what went wrong, I can't help it
I wonder what went wrong.

By 1776, the 13 colonies had acquired their independence from Mother England and set about to establish a country rooted in the ideals embodied in the U.S. Constitution that still hold the nation together. It was the promise of freedom and equal justice for all.

The United States spread west and incorporated into it the masses of Europe, the tired, the hungry, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free. The young country soon contracted the dreaded European disease known as imperialism and spread its wings – as newspaper editor John O'Sullivan , the sloganeer, phrased it – to accomplish its "manifest destiny."

By 1848, having invaded and defeated the newly-independent and division-torn Mexican state and acquired more than half of its territory, it set about to settle and grab the great stretches of land west of the Mississippi and beyond the Continental Divide. Hungry European and Irish refugees looked across the ocean to a new beginning, for them, the American Dream.

They came by the millions, often to face a backlash by those who were already here. Even the Irish often found that in the lowest jobs, the statement "Irish Need Not Apply" was posted below the advertisement for workers.

And still, the nagging and lingering "peculiar institution" that relegated the black slave and his descendants to a life of servitude and second-class citizenship (remember the three-fifths Compromise?) continued to hang around the nation's conscience like an albatross.

It would only be a matter of time before the festering sore would explode "like a raisin in the sun" and the matter was brought to the fore and faced squarely in a bloody Civil War between brothers.
It had to reconcile its comportment with its stated ideals, or, as one of the descendants of slaves, Barbara Jordan, so simply and eloquently stated: "What the people want is very simple – they want an America as good as its promise."

And I dreamed I was flying. I dreamed my soul rose
unexpectedly, and looking back down on me, smiled
reassuringly, and I dreamed I was dying.
And far above, my eyes could clearly see
The Statue of Liberty, drifting away to sea
And I dreamed I was flying.

Lately, it seems the Good Ship America doesn't want some of us anymore.

In contrast to the laws of the past that actually sought out agreements with nations like China, Mexico and others to fill jobs no one – not even the descendants of the Irish – would take, it now seeks out those who appear different and targets them for banishment from the realm.

During wars and times when labor was needed, the trains and transports would stream to the border to load up with laborers only too glad to find any kind of work to feed their families back in their homelands. Chinese workers built – and died building – the railroads in the West.

The Germans and Scandinavians made the Plains fertile. The Irish provided the raw muscle for huge public projects in the East. People like Albert Einstein, a Jewish scientist refugee fleeing the Nazi nightmare, helped us win the war. Countless other human beings cast out by want or the authoritarian regimes of their homelands migrated here and contributed their grain of sand.

Mexicans bent their backs to make the deserts green and gathered the minerals from the depths of dank, dark mines.  
An now, the 911 tragedy combined with a retrenchment  has antagonized us against each other.
Walls have been built and more are contemplated..
Deportations have started again.

The Constitution was not a perfect instrument. We have had to amend it 27 times. We have found out separate is not equal, that a person cannot be counted at three-fifths for purposes of political representation, that 18-year-olds – if they can die in our wars – should also be allowed to vote.

That women – the other half of the sky – should be allowed their voice in our national affairs through suffrage. But it didn't happen without a good dose of kicking and screaming from those traditionally accustomed to holding the power.
(We would do well to note that even now the entrenched dominant male mentality still haunts us as is witnessed by the white male-Texas Legislature passing laws that seek to impose their medieval morality on women's reproductive rights. The decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court striking down Texas laws limiting access to abortion clinics speak to that issue.)  

And so we find ourselves like that first load of Pilgrims who unloaded their meager belongings at Plymouth agonizing over what kind of nation we want to be, what kind of people we want to become, what kind of future we want for our children. Will we forget the promise that was made back when?
Or can we soar higher?


We come on a ship we call the Mayflower,
We come on a ship that sailed the moon 
We come at the age's most uncertain hour
And sing the American tune
But it's all right, it's all right
You can't be forever blessed
Still, tomorrow's gonna be another working day
And I'm trying to get some rest,
That's all, I'm trying to get some rest


9 comments:

Anonymous said...

How very quaint! One day a year, you wave the American flag and extol this as the greatest country on earth. The rest of the year, you denigrate, malign and spit on the Euro-cockroaches that founded this country.

A basic course in US history would teach you that the "Pilgrims" were not the founding stock of this country. When they landed at Plymouth in 1620, the Virginia Colony was flourishing and expanding.

My 8th GGrandfather arrived at Jamestown in 1619. We gave you and the others who dispise us this great country. No human endevor is perfect, because no human is perfect, still you and your ilk like to pretend that you know the answers and have the way.

It would be interesting to research yours and others critics families and compile a list of their dirty deeds and then use those to beat your ancestors with and call their off spring Mestizo cucarachas.

Your annual salute to America falls on deaf ears, because the others days, you beat the drum or racial animas.

Anonymous said...

@July 4, 2019 at 10:58 AM


Research in areas of imprisonment all your ancestors were released from the cucaracho prisons in europe. There you will find why they were in prison most for theivery many were insane and public corruption and other petty crimes. They were release and put on boats and sent to the new world. Not so colorful history but you and your fairy tales will never be remembered as you say. The new world became a dumping-ground' for Britain's and other cockroach european countries. They were all processed and transported here. So so bright!!! IDIOT

Anonymous said...

When they got here(your ancestors) they ran out the boats dying of hunger carring all kinds of infectious diseases and corrupt as hell. THOSE WERE YOUR ANCESTORS... NO FAIRY TALE HERE

Anonymous said...

5:35.... You are confused, you are talking about the flood of "hispanics" that are flooding accross the border. They are malnourished, poor and carry all kinds of infectious diseses.

Anonymous said...

still with their fairy tales pendejos

Anonymous said...

5:35 Your ancestors were huracheros who lived in a jacal with goats and were infested with fleas and lice. They shit in the front yard and tried to steal the Ricos cattle for which they were killed if caught. Theives and diseased and overall just a bunch of ignorant, illterate greasers. That is what they would still be if the white man had not come along, put shoes on their feet and sent them to school. No fariy tale here!

Anonymous said...

Keep on dreaming honky hillybilly read the real history of your ancestors bunch of theives released from cockroach european prisons. Scotish-irish hahahahahaha pura pinche ratas y cucarachos comiendose los mocos. Cracker face hillybillies marry their sisters and date their mothers.

Anonymous said...

@July 5, 2019 at 2:28 PM

You sound more like a wanna be white mojado

Anonymous said...

Go back to your country of origin the new pig's slogan

rita