US Independence Day arrives at a time when the country is roiled by hearings over the Jan. 6 insurrection, awash in turmoil over US Supreme Court rulings on abortion and guns and struggling to maintain the common bonds that keep it together.
Yet many also see cause to celebrate: The COVID-19 pandemic continues to be on the wane and, despite its faults, the US’ democracy survives.
“I think many of us are feeling conflicted about celebrating fourth of July right now,” obstacle race champion and attorney Amelia Boone wrote on Twitter as the week gave way to the long holiday weekend.
Photo: AFP
Patriotism is also about fighting for change, she said, adding: “I’m not giving up on the US.”
That sentiment is no doubt shared by millions who yesterday were to celebrate the nation’s 246th birthday and anniversary of independence from English rule.
It is a day for taking off work, flocking to parades, devouring hot dogs and burgers at backyard barbecues, and gathering under a canopy of stars and exploding fireworks — in many cases for the first time in three years amid easing COVID-19 precautions.
Baltimore, for one, is resuming its Independence Day celebrations after a two-year hiatus, to the delight of residents.
Colorful displays big and small were set to light up the night sky in cities from New York to Seattle to Chicago to Dallas. However others, particularly in drought-stricken and wildfire-prone regions of the West, planned to forgo them.
To be sure, these are precarious times: An economic recession lurks, and the national psyche is still raw from mass shootings such as those seen recently at a Texas elementary school and a New York supermarket.
Sharp social and political divisions have also been laid bare by recent Supreme Court decisions overturning the constitutional right to abortion and striking down a New York law limiting who can carry a gun in public.
Yet for many, July 4 is also a chance to set aside political differences and to celebrate unity, reflecting on the revolution that gave rise to history’s longest-lived democracy.
Eli Merritt, a political historian at Vanderbilt University whose upcoming book traces the fraught founding of the US in 1776, said that “there’s always something to divide or unite us.”
However, he sees the Jan. 6 hearings probing last year’s storming of the US Capitol as a reason for hope, an opportunity to rally behind democratic institutions.
Even though not all Americans or their elected representatives agree with the committee’s work, Merritt is heartened by the fact that it is at least somewhat bipartisan with some Republicans joining in.
“Moral courage as a locus for Americans to place hope; the willingness to stand up for what is right and true in spite of negative consequences to oneself,” he said. “That is an essential glue of constitutional democracy.”
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