250
There’s a Phil Ochs song that goes:
And now it can be told
I'm a quarter of a century old
But I'm a half a century high
Phil never made it to half a century. He died by suicide when he was 35, in 1976, coincidentally the bicentennial of the Declaration of Independence. I was four and a half, if I am doing my math right, which is always a question.
And that was 49 years ago.
I did make it to half a century, and past that, though it was a near thing a couple of times, and here I am writing you this note on the morning of the sesquicentennial of the battles of Lexington and Concord, which marks the start of what would become the American Revolutionary War.
The house that I sit in as I write this is at least 283 years old. It’s seen all this and more. I take a lot of comfort in that fact some days: this house has stood through at least five domestic wars and more epidemics and pandemics that I feel like doing the research to count right now.
Here in Massachusetts, we take a great deal of pride in our status as the “Cradle of Liberty.” Our tourism industry rests in part on that, and local news has been all aflutter with the coverage of the leadup to re-enactments of various aspects of those fateful days. Monday is a state holiday here, Patriots’ Day, which is also celebrated in Maine (because Maine was a part of Massachusetts Colony at the time), and in several other states in an unofficial sort of way.
It is also, not coincidentally, the day the Boston Marathon is run.
Anyway.
250 years.
One quarter of a millennium. Lots of bad and good along the way; lots of corruption and moral compromise; some moments of real courage and honor. Ours is the nation of the Trail of Tears and the Tulsa Massacre and the Vietnam War and a thousand other atrocities. It is also the nation of the Marshall Plan, Frederick Douglass, and the Bill of Rights.
We have a mixed record, I guess I’m saying.
And I cannot help but feel that the moment is upon us now, in this hour, in this time, when we must finally, as a society, face up to the failures and founding sins of our origins—the slavery, the ethnic cleansing, the genocide—and assume our adulthood as a people. We have, to paraphrase a Black friend of mine, a choice between white supremacy and democracy.
“Patriotic” America has been drunk on denialism for a long time, and I think a good deal of the impetus for the current rise of white supremacy, queerphobia, and misogyny in the USA stems from certain people’s unwillingness to face up to our imperfections and make amends and try to do better. I think true patriotism lies in community and diversity and building a society that supports all of us and enables our greatness, not just the wealthy white men.
We have a choice between denial and moral cowardice and jingoism and authoritarianism—or freedom.
We cannot have both. We must choose. And the choice is starker than it has ever been in my lifetime.
A Republic, if we can keep it.