I apologize in advance for the length of this diary. I hope that you find it worth reading, as I have to get this off of my chest, and try to channel the anger out of my body and soul and into these words on this screen.
I haven't quite seen thirty years of this life yet, even if that day is coming up a little sooner than I'd like. I was born in Sierra Vista Hospital in San Luis Obispo, CA in 1981. And because life's little lottery (or the deity of your choice) had me born there, I am a natural-born citizen of the United States of America.
Logically, pride in the place that you were born isn't exactly something to, well, be that proud over. After all, I didn't earn citizenship. My parents didn't go through trials and tribulations to leave the squalor of the Old World. The most recent immigrant in my lineage was my maternal grandmother...from Canada. A few generations up there's some Russian emigrants, but on my mother's side, we can trace our lineage here to well before the American Revolution. Bennett Goodrum, an ancestor of mine, wintered in Valley Forge with George Washington.
And there is some pride in that, in things people better than I did before I was a twinkle in my eyes of my parents, and in the legacy that represents. Military service runs strong in my family. I was raised, and still consider myself, fiercely American. I was taught that this was a land where if you worked hard enough, and took advantage of opportunity, that you could live a wonderful life here. I was also taught that were I to become a success, that it was my responsibility to help those that were not as successful as I. And I was taught these values and other that have guided my life. And I was taught these values with the understanding that these were American values.
Maybe these values at one point were American values. After all, when I was born, Reagan had only been in office a year. There had not been 30 years of slow poisoning of the idea Americans were not just responsible for their own prosperity, but responsible for assisting those less fortunate than them should opportunity not knock at their door, or should ill health and the worst sort of luck befall them.
Once, I was proud to be an American. Even recently, this was the case, especially in November of 2008, when I saw a man with the color of skin that was once enslaved in this nation elected its leader, on a promise that yes, America is still great, that Americans should have health care, that yes, America, as great as it was, still had greater days ahead...
That yes, we could, and yes, we did.
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