If you had told me roughly 44 years ago that I would be commemorating the semiquincentennial anniversary of my nation’s founding with a journal entry entitled no girl u need to go to the hospital, I would have stared at you in utter confusion.

My reason for celebrating the Fourth is this BlueSky post, which will live rent-free in my head forever:

You laugh because otherwise you will cry.

The reason why four-year-old me would be baffled is that, even at that tender age, I was an ardent creedal nationalist.

My mother, as you know, was an 18th century American clothing historian, and Colonial-era historical re-enactment was her passion. At this exact moment, 43 years ago, I was being towed around Independence Mall in Philadelphia by my mom, both of us dressed in full 18th Century civilian garb. Probably alongside a Ben Franklin impersonator. My mom knew all the Ben Franklin impersonators in Philly.

My mother’s obsession with history, American and Jewish, imparted me with a kind of child’s version of revolutionary Enlightenment humanism. Even at the age of 4, I was old enough to understand the outlines of ideas like “freedom” and “liberty” and “equality”. Though not yet in kindergarden, I felt passionately, and with a kid’s simplicity, that no one should tell another what they may and may not do with their lives, nor that any person should be treated as inherently better than anyone else.

To me, this creed was “self-evident”, and that it formed the very core of America, of what it means to be American. I was taught, and believe still, that the struggles of the American Revolution, our Civil War, and the World Wars were principally fought and won by true American patriots. These citizen-soldiers were animated to the point of self-sacrifice by a sense of duty to this creed. I took immense pride in my father’s military service, and that of my aunts and uncle, and my grandfathers, and that of my distant great-great-grandfather who took up arms to end enslavement.

Now, of course, possessed of a more nuanced view of the world, I know this romantic view of history largely not to be true. But neither it is wholly untrue.

Nevertheless, 44 years ago, I possessed the uncomplicated patriotism available only to a child or a fool. I remember experiencing a bitter regret, bordering on a sense of loss, that I was born just barely too late to take part in our nation’s bicentennial celebration. I don’t remember imagining America’s 250th birthday, but I would have taken a great satisfaction in commemorating it.

Poor kid. Poor us. The me that survives today is still a dedicated creedal nationalist, but a weary one, resentful that my ancestor’s struggles are still alive today, and that, for the moment, the ethnofascists temporarily have the upper hand. Girl, u need to go to the hospital.

I curse ethnic nationalism. Its very nature is contrary to the American ideal that no person should be treated as inherently better than anyone else, and its imperative necessitates that it must tell some people what they may and may not do with their lives. Ethnic nationalism is, and I don’t say this lightly, evil.

Why White Christians, who have ruled Europe for over a millennium, should dare to claim a right to our country as their White Christian homeland is beyond me. Fuck them. It’s not theirs to claim, and they can’t have it.

It’s always been easy for me to be an American creedal nationalist. The promise of the American creed has never been alien to me. My socioeconomic privilege has allowed me full enjoyment of it, and likely will continue to.

I know that my country has never lived up to its promises. Many people I know and respect, like my own spouse, are skeptical that America ever can or ever will. To me, this doesn’t diminish the idea one bit. On the contrary, it reinforces it.

I still believe that it is the duty of those who are able to partake in the full promise of the American creed to work to extend the sacred rights of equality and self-determination to everyone who sets foot on American soil, without exception. Bit by bit, we have progressed over the last 250 years, not entirely without hindrance or setback, but those setbacks do not absolve us of a duty to that creed.

On this, the notional 250th anniversary of America’s founding, I turn to the words of that great American patriot, Langston Hughes:

Let America Be America Again

By Langston Hughes

Let America be America again.

Let it be the dream it used to be.

Let it be the pioneer on the plain

Seeking a home where he himself is free.

 

(America never was America to me.)

 

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed—

Let it be that great strong land of love

Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme

That any man be crushed by one above.

 

(It never was America to me.)

 

O, let my land be a land where Liberty

Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,

But opportunity is real, and life is free,

Equality is in the air we breathe.

 

(There's never been equality for me,

Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

 

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?

And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

 

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,

I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.

I am the red man driven from the land,

I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek—

And finding only the same old stupid plan

Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

 

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,

Tangled in that ancient endless chain

Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!

Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!

Of work the men! Of take the pay!

Of owning everything for one's own greed!

 

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.

I am the worker sold to the machine.

I am the Negro, servant to you all.

I am the people, humble, hungry, mean—

Hungry yet today despite the dream.

Beaten yet today — O, Pioneers!

I am the man who never got ahead,

The poorest worker bartered through the years.

 

Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream

In the Old World while still a serf of kings,

Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,

That even yet its mighty daring sings

In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned

That's made America the land it has become.

O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas

In search of what I meant to be my home—

For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,

And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,

And torn from Black Africa's strand I came

To build a "homeland of the free."

 

The free?

 

Who said the free?  Not me?

Surely not me?  The millions on relief today?

The millions shot down when we strike?

The millions who have nothing for our pay?

For all the dreams we've dreamed

And all the songs we've sung

And all the hopes we've held

And all the flags we've hung,

The millions who have nothing for our pay—

Except the dream that's almost dead today.

 

O, let America be America again—

The land that never has been yet—

And yet must be — the land where every man is free.

The land that's mine—

Rhe poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME—

Who made America,

Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,

Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,

Must bring back our mighty dream again.

 

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose—

The steel of freedom does not stain.

From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,

We must take back our land again,

America!

 

O, yes,

I say it plain,

America never was America to me,

And yet I swear this oath—

America will be!

 

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,

The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,

We, the people, must redeem

The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.

The mountains and the endless plain—

All, all the stretch of these great green states—

And make America again!

Thank you for reading this far. I wish all of you a happy 250th anniversary of America’s birth, and a hearty fuck you to all the Christian fascists everywhere. And to my dearest United States of America: Girl, u need to go to the hospital. Like, right now. Ceterum censeo imperdiet vigilum cessandam est.