Hi again folks. Well, since this is a multi-national household and Sam and Felina took care of Canada Day, it falls to me to discuss America’s independence day. I hope I can do it with the same integrity as those two other members of the global family.
I am not, at present, a real happy American. I’ve lost a lot of faith in both the Executive branch and the Congress. I haven’t been real pleased with presidential campaigns which call into question a tortured POW’s ability to raise his arms easily beyond a certain point and another which makes more of an issue about another candidate being half black rather than half white. I also don’t like the idea that the Clintons thought Hillary needed Bill to help her out in the first place.
I don’t much like an infrastructure that makes me wonder if Katrina Relief wasn’t deliberately bungled because New Orleans is still Southern. I don’t much care for the idea that Iraq veterans are returning with concussion wounds to the state of facilities like Walter Reed Hospital. I don’t like the idea that a bridge in Minneapolis-St. Paul collapsed and for awhile focused the nation’s attention on why structures like that fell into such disabuse.
I’ve never felt that greed and insecurity were the sole province of any political party,nationality, gender, etc. John F. Kennedy said it best for me when he asserted that any problem created by a human being could be rectified by a human being. God willing and the desire is there.
There’s not much I, as Rusty Miller, can do to directly influence the fate of the planet, the nation, perhaps even my state and community. But I can certainly do things that a growing number of others are doing on ALL those levels.
To me, independence, then, is also a personal issue. Perhaps we, as individuals and as a nation, have looked a bit too long and depended a little too much on Washington, DC, when we should have been looking a little closer to home. Perhaps, in our haste to keep a bit more than we’ve really needed, we’ve forgotten who we really are.
At least to me, we’re Americans. We’re families, neighborhoods, small towns and cities made of small towns. We’re about working hard for and going home to those we love and care about. On the one hand, we consider ourselves so sophisticated but on that world stage, we’re sentimental and schmaltzy and probably the most embarrassingly obnoxious group of individuals ever assembled under one flag and 50-odd.
We’re also a country whose people, according to a recent United Nations survey, contribute more per capita to international relief efforts than any nation on the planet. In the past, whether it turned out in our best interests, America has also gone to bat for the little guy because that’s who we also are. We’re either all little guys or descended from same.
In the days and weeks ahead, I’m going to talk about what some of us little folks in Seattle are doing and I’d love to hear from you in those regards, with permission to share with the whole “family,” as it were.
My venerable grandfather Seamus spoke for OUR house when he observed of both Americans and the human species in general:
“Rusty, we’re not doing too bad for a critter that was created last with what was left over.”
Happy Independence Day, folks.
Rusty
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