Let America Be America Again
America at 250: grief and celebration
Sending this one a bit early, before the holiday weekend kicks off. The headline is the title of a Langston Hughes poem, which you can read here.
America’s 250th birthday has me feeling some kind of way. I’m not alone. For the last month, I’ve been thinking about this year’s 4th of July holiday and trying to name my feelings. The word that comes up most often is grief.
Grief has been a constant emotion in my life this last decade. I lost my Dad, my Papaw, and there were multiple pregnancy losses, including a termination for medical reasons, before I got pregnant with my kids. Just this week, our family said goodbye to our beloved cat, Iowa. Which means I now get to share what I’ve learned about grief with my children, as I teach them how to experience and process loss for the first time.
What I’ve come to realize is that alongside my personal grief, I’ve also been grieving my country. America is currently being run as an authoritarian state, and those in power are doing so much damage that there’s no way an election or two will be enough to restore what we’ve lost. Roe is gone, the Voting Rights Act is gone, there was a violent coup attempt, and four years later, we voted those responsible for it back to power. Migrants and the Trans community are being terrorized, and the MAGA movement continues to destroy all the progress we’ve ever made towards becoming a fully realized multiracial democracy. Dismantling us piece by piece, and enriching Trump and his cronies with the profits. Corruption at a massive scale.
Then there’s Covid. Which took so much from us as Americans (not to mention the world). As a friend of mine put it to me, at one point, we were suffering the equivalent of a 9/11 every day in terms of lives lost, and yet we were just expected to keep going as if things weren’t falling apart all around us.
In 2024, I wrote about how America was avoiding grieving that loss. Rereading that post, it’s hard not to see that we find ourselves where we are, caused not only by the pandemic but also by our refusal as a nation to grieve an unspeakable systemic catastrophe. We’re a crueler and more isolated society than ever before, both in the micro and macro sense. And became easy prey for Trump and his regime to exploit.
I can’t speak for anyone else, but I grieve because I’ve always liked America and being American. We have this incredible culture that, at its best, can change hearts and minds everywhere. I’m always reminded of this when I travel outside the country. People love to tell me about American music and mass media that means something to them. Such as learning English by watching American TV shows or growing up listening to American popular music genres like Hip Hop or Country. Because our popular culture comes from people all over the world who came here, anyone and everyone can see themselves in its pieces. It’s our soft power and America’s true superpower.
I won’t pretend America has ever lived up to its promise or ideals. The men who wrote our founding documents were enslavers and exploiters. Our nation was forged in cruelty and bloodshed as much as or more than the promise of freedom. But I used to believe that most of us were doing our best to live up to those ideas. Trying and failing, and trying again to build a nation where anyone was entitled to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Do I still believe that now? I’m no longer sure, but I want to.
What I know is that America, at least in terms of our system of government, is lost. We can’t go back, and there’s no return to normal. We can only move forward. To do that, we must grieve. We need to name our feelings and move through them rather than avoid them. To understand that our sadness today doesn’t mean things will always be like they are now. I wish I could teach America to grieve the way I’m teaching my kids this week. Because as I’m moving through grief with my family at home, I realize it’s the same lesson.
One thing that does give me hope is that America is more than our government. Certainly, it’s more than our current regime. An America without our diverse populace, the optimism we bring, and the popular culture we create is joyless and sad, as Donald Trump learned with the debacle that is Freedom 250 and the Great American State Fair. But seeing America through the eyes of World Cup fans who have followed their teams here, I feel more optimistic. Politics is downstream of culture, and MAGA’s continued attempts to dominate popular culture have failed spectacularly. If nothing else, our global cultural impact will outlive the current regime.
We each get to choose how we commemorate America’s 250th anniversary. I choose to grieve what we’ve lost and feel those feelings as much as I need to. I also chose to believe that there’s a better possible future for us as a nation. Which is why this weekend, alongside my grief, I choose to celebrate everything that makes America a nation worth fighting for.
ICYMI
They Want Us to Forget How We Saved Democracy the First Two Times. Don’t Let Them (The Root)
Her Grandparents Fought to Join American Democracy. She’s Fighting to Complete it. (19th News)
A Reckoning with the Future of Resistance (Political Research Associates)
Coda
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Since I professed my love for American pop culture, I’m going to close us out with one of my favorites, an NSFW-ish SNL sketch featuring Will Ferrell and his version of patriotism.
Talk to you again next Sunday!
Much to grieve, much more to celebrate. Glad to hear you are keeping hope alive.