July 4 Blues

“I just don’t feel like singing patriotic songs,” a church member said to me a few days ago. She was one of several whom I have heard express, with some sadness, that they cannot get into the mood to celebrate Independence Day this year – not because they don’t love their country, but because they do.

July 4 used to be a national Sabbath – a day when everybody stopped working to pause, reflect on and celebrate the meaning of being a United States citizen. Sure, it’s been a time for picnics, backyard barbeques and fireworks, but always with the stars and stripes prominently featured in the decorations. Iconic images like the Statue of Liberty, the Liberty Bell, and the heads of Washington and Lincoln would turn our attention away from our daily pre-occupations toward the larger vision of our founders.

The point I’m making is not that we used to be more civic-minded or better informed about our nation’s history – though both of those things are true. What I’m struck by is how July 4 used to be one of the few days when we were invited to turn our thoughts to matters of national import. It’s getting harder and harder to remember, but time was when one of the great blessings of being an American citizen was the freedom to go about the affairs of one’s life and trust that the business of the nation would be taken care of without our constant attention. We weren’t like other countries embroiled in civil strife, where despots and failed economies erased any distance between national and personal concern. Ours was a nation of blessed inertia. The delicate balance of checks and balances and various levels of government pretty much ensured that, even though elected leaders might be pursuing policies with which we disagreed, there were still basic parameters – or civic norms – within which the political pendulum was required to swing, and stable institutions that kept those parameters in place.

So while it was always important to vote, exercising the franchise that ensured our government remained a representative democracy, it wasn’t necessary or even desirable to be fixated day-by-day, hour-by-hour, on what was happening in Washington. After all, the liberty we celebrated on Independence Day was precisely the freedom to live according to the dictates of one’s own conscience, and secure quality of life in our communities and neighborhoods by organizing locally.

Of course, some groups of Americans have enjoyed this kind of liberty more than others. We’ve never been perfect. Systemic racism has placed artificial limits on the freedom of people of color, and it has taken a national consciousness at pivotal moments to press us toward a “more perfect union.” But until recently, the norm of life in every American community was more localized and less politicized.

Now that social media has exploded, politicizing and nationalizing everything, and has produced a President who wants to be the center of everybody’s attention all the time, we are captured by a perpetual sense of urgency about national affairs. All the parameters have been obliterated. The norms have been crashed. Institutional stability has been replaced with chaos and unpredictability. As a result, July 4 increasingly feels less like a day apart than another moment in the long slog of vigilant endurance. For some, gleefully singing patriotic songs and waving little flags to Sousa marches seems hollow, even dishonest, more a child’s game of pretend than an adult commemoration. Independence Day feels less like an occasion to celebrate than a somber reminder of what we are in danger of losing.

Fortunately, all is not lost. Far from it. The current upheaval has spurred a higher level of political engagement than we’ve seen in a long time. In a participatory democracy, that is an unqualified good. Elections as obscure as local primaries are bringing people to the polls who’ve never voted before. Grass roots movements are springing up everywhere. A new generation of activists (millennials now outnumber baby boomers) seems poised to re-shape the political landscape with a pragmatism that is more interested in results than political victory. But before such a transformation takes place, we must endure this season of discontent when polarized factions spend more time defining enemies than seeking common ground, and reactionary fears give rise to ugly spirits that many of us thought had been banished for good. Right now, it feels like we are slipping backwards and resisting history’s arc of justice. July 4 is no picnic.

But the night is always darkest before the dawn. That’s not to say the night won’t get darker, but the dawn always comes. And when it does, it will be easier to stay appropriately engaged without becoming obsessively fixated. We won’t be glued to our smartphones, tablets, or cable news shows hoping for some – any – new tidbit of information that helps us make sense of what is happening. When the new day comes, we’ll settle back into an appropriate balance between staying informed and living the lives we are free to enjoy. Local politics will re-emerge as the primary arena of civic engagement. We will resume a steady, if incremental, movement toward the fulfillment of our ideals. And July 4, once again, will be the national Sabbath it was meant to be.

©2018 by J. Mark Lawson

Comments

[Michael Salamone]

Thanks for your message of a brighter tomorrow for our nation. It is what we need to hear more of this year.

[Deborah Record]

I admire your optimism and I hope you’re right that “the dawn will come.”