My Fellow Americans…

(I started writing this on inauguration day 2015, I finished it on the 4th of July)

My Fellow Americans, lend me your ears…

No wait, that’s not quite right, now is it.

I seem to be mixing historical drama with history, don’t I? Still, there can be some value in the dramatic treatment of history. It can illuminate a moment. Like a social media filter, the dramatic lens is artificial, but it nonetheless reduces the noise and amplifies parts of the signal.

For the phrase introduced by F.D.R. into the common lexicon of inauguration speech writers, I want to make clear that although I am addressing all readers who reside in this country, I have in mind those in particular who feel that they are the true Americans. I have some history to share. As for the Shakespeare? So are they all, all honorable men (and women who passed the Belligerent Bloated Bill).

I must apologize again, for I am being intentionally obtuse. Allow me then to clarify my meaning. We are not quite in pace to be at the end of Mark Antony’s speech in our current historical moment, but if you know how it goes then you realize that it is a matter of where my heart lies at the end of it, and where I believe the heart of all true Americans should lay if we indeed arrive at the point where she is in the coffin.

There at her feet is the oft quoted line by Emma Lazarus, “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.”

It’s worth noting that this isn’t the first attempt to put her in the ground.

During the first Trump administration, Ken Cuccinelli proved that he is no poet, and that he fundamentally misunderstands the ideal of what America has always seen itself as. His attempted edit went thusly.

"Give me your tired and your poor Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free who can stand on their own two feet, and who will not become a public charge.”

As if the people in question aren't literally the hardest working Americans by residency.

It was a crude attempt to shoehorn in the first Trump administration’s attempt to begin digging a grave for the ideal America (a land of immigrants coming together into something greater) with the rough spade known as the public charge rule.

COVID-19 and the subsequent Biden administration resulted in a temporary pause in the digging. The incoming (now current) Trump administration was well prepared to toss aside simple shovels and bring in the sort of machinery big enough to bury this ideal America that Lady Liberty came to represent even if she wasn’t intended to be seen this way when she was first gifted to us.

I know, I have lost you already. You stopped reading because you know that you know, without asking further, that I’m a radical leftist scum who doesn’t understand the nuts and bolts of this capitalist enterprise. That I don’t understand the economic reality.

It’s okay.

I’ll wait for you to come back after it’s already too late and my heart is there in the coffin with her.

I don’t have the pulpit to reach the people who need to hear this the most anyway, and my chosen style of writing for this post is undoubtedly off-putting for most of that audience.

It is far too fancy, isn’t it.

That’s okay.

We all know that I’m writing this for myself.

It’s on my personal blog after all.

The audience for this version of this history exists only in my head.

Very well then, I shall cut to the heart of the matter and complete this exercise in futility.

America apparently stands ready to destroy countless human lives.

Just enough of us want to cut our nose off to spite our face.

Less than 50% of the people who voted chose this path, and an uncounted number of them have buyer's remorse, but it doesn't matter.

The system is not flexible in this way.

There is an awful momentum to this thing, and many will die and even more will be irreparably damaged.

So be it.

Let us find out the hard way whether Lady Liberty is a phoenix.