My son has the "blessing" of being born on the 4th of July. Growing up in and around Philadelphia, I can remember a time, the years around the Bicentennial mostly, when the idea of being born on Independence Day might have meant something. Currently, it's good for a day off, and the relatives have a better reason to congregate in a big group other than to hear and see fireworks explode overhead. As George W. Bush and his kleptocratic cronies have forced a sunset on the America I loved and admired, I don't know whether I'm looking at a toddling future patriot or a future refugee.
It's not that we now torture out in the open. We've always done that. Ask an indigenous American whether his people got a fair shake before Bush the Lesser showed up on the scene. We've had a bad habit of doing it to other people by proxy in places like Iran, the Phillipines, the Dominican Republic and Chile just in my 42-year lifetime.
It's not that we spy on our own citizens without a warrant. We did that for awhile too. J. Edgar Hoover and his FBI goon squads of the past were nothing if not thorough.
It's not like Republican corruption on a grand sceme isn't familiar to us. Watergate and Iran-Contra were pretty big as I recall.
Economic crashes and oil shortages are nothing new to me. I remember the days of "WIN" buttons and odd-even gas rationing.
What's missing is the consequences. The heads of those who have placed our country in its present state suffer no punishment for their actions, either from a thoroughly spayed and neutered Congress or a stacked judiciary, led most publicly by a newfangled Gang of Four on the Supreme Court. The media elites giggle and titter among themselves over lukewarm shrimp over the very idea of our president's and his henchmen's actions being illegal and actionable by the Constitution.
If the Constitution is not honored and executed in the way it was intended, then we cease to be a country of laws. We are now, for all intents and purposes, an oligarchy, rewriting its standards of conduct as it hums merrily along. Major corporations own news outlets, senators, congresspeople and the Executive Branch lock, stock and barrel. The only thing more mentally debillitating than living through the disaster of the Bush Presidency is the idea that the Oligarch-In-Chief is going to walk away an unimpeached, free man this coming January.
We can kid ourselves about what it means that Barack Obama, an African-American, is on the brink of the presidency. If what precedes him is a top-to-bottom criminal operation that suffers no ill fate, odds are very good that it will take a long, long time to undo the damage. By the most inclusive current American standard, as this country celebrates the 232nd anniversary of its declaration of independence from the last Great White Empire, Obama has a maximum of 8 years. There's always hope, but this particular chance weighs about 900 pounds.
So about 11 or 12 hours from now, the relatives and friends will descend upon my house in what will surely become a decade-long ritual of birthday celebrations. My son is too young to understand what has happened to the country of his parents' birth. He's too young to realize that if his country somehow survives its current nightmare, he'll have his birthday as a day off for a large part of his life. He's too young to get sick of receiving red, white and blue gifts and flag birthday cakes. Sure, he's the future, but I question, even with the obvious implications of the date of his birth, whether his best future is as a citizen of the Unites States.