Dear friends,
How did you sleep? It sounded a bit like a war zone near Prospect Park, with the popping of fireworks throughout the night.
What are people celebrating? That is always my question.
Some are surely rejoicing in the return to post-pandemic life, even if it’s premature. Dr. Fauci, responsible party-pooper that he is, has noted that vaccine-resistance (freedom!?) is “sad” and “tragic” and likely to lead to a surge in cases because of the Delta variant.
The meaning of 1776 has shifted this year, more than usual:
On Jan. 6, rioters entered the U.S. Capitol, some waving 13-starred “1776” flags. Two weeks later, President Trump’s 1776 Commission issued its report calling for “patriotic education,” which painted progressives as enemies of the timeless values of the founding.
And in recent months, “1776” has been a rallying cry for conservative activists taking the fight against critical race theory to local school boards across the country, further turning an emblem of national identity into a culture-war battering ram.
Historians are grappling with the question of what and how we celebrate Independence Day. We are just five years out from the semiquincentennial — 250 years! who can resist that word?! — and the discussion is more nuanced and interesting than you might expect.
Read Jennifer Schuessler’s “The Battle for 1776.”
This is not the first time that the divisions in the US have made for fraught celebrations. Lincoln called Congress into special session on July 4, 1861. Then, as now, there had been angry mobs threatening the electoral count, just months before the nation’s ‘birthday’. There was fear of another wave of vigilantism to depose the new president.
To seize the high ground, Lincoln worked for weeks on a carefully written message that restated the country’s highest truths, the way a Fourth of July oration should. He argued that the war was “essentially a people’s contest,” and reminded Americans that democracy required a fundamental trust in others to work. If “discontented individuals” attacked the government every time they lost an election, with false “sophisms,” and other ways of “drugging the public mind,” it would put an end to democracy everywhere. When ballots have “fairly and constitutionally decided,” there can be no appeal “back to bullets.”
Read Ted Widmer’s “The Fourth of July that Could Have Wrecked the Country.”
In any case, it’s a holiday. You don’t have to do your homework. Like me, you may need a nap.
Have a great day!
with love,
L