It’s taken me a while but, perhaps similar to your Twitter mutual, I’ve been in a place where everything “America” felt like an elaborate fiction. I longed for what came before -- mid century Americana; what came before that -- the European motherland; and even what came before that -- a connection to native Anglo-Saxon and Dane and Celtic peoples. It was all as LARP-y as I felt the “American fiction” to be.
I realized that it’s hard to love an abstraction. But people? My neighbors? The soil in my yard? I can love them. And with them I can help make this country something I could see myself being proud of. So I’ve come to a place where I can say the Pledge of Allegiance again, not in blind devotion to what came before as when I was in elementary school, but from a place of hope, as a self-dedication to a nation--real people, real land--that’s really under God, where people actually live with liberty and justice.
It’s taken me a while but, perhaps similar to your Twitter mutual, I’ve been in a place where everything “America” felt like an elaborate fiction. I longed for what came before -- mid century Americana; what came before that -- the European motherland; and even what came before that -- a connection to native Anglo-Saxon and Dane and Celtic peoples. It was all as LARP-y as I felt the “American fiction” to be.
I realized that it’s hard to love an abstraction. But people? My neighbors? The soil in my yard? I can love them. And with them I can help make this country something I could see myself being proud of. So I’ve come to a place where I can say the Pledge of Allegiance again, not in blind devotion to what came before as when I was in elementary school, but from a place of hope, as a self-dedication to a nation--real people, real land--that’s really under God, where people actually live with liberty and justice.
Idk. Some thoughts inspired by your thoughts.
That's exactly what I mean!
It was good. Very moving. Thank you.
Thanks for reading!
I thought this tweet said it well:
https://twitter.com/birdchadlouis/status/1676168790638297088