Independence Day. 

I suppose that at this moment in history, after everything, it’s a cliche to be cynical about our country. After all the wrongs that have been committed under the guise of being right, and the repeated mockeries made of the “Founding Fathers” and our Declaration of Independence. You could say that there’s never been more to be cynical about. But the other side to cynicism ought to be realism. In realism there can be hope. The men and women who rebelled against the status quo in 1776 were people like us, really: imperfect, apt to make mistakes and miscalculations, certainly selfish at times. It’s foolish and dangerous to mythologize them as wise god-like figures. If we were able to step back and take a look at them as ordinary human beings who decided to fight back against tyranny and injustice, we might be all the more awed by them, and all the more encouraged to do the same ourselves, right now. We have no need of rose-colored perception, either of the past, which is naive, or of the present, which is wasteful. Because at this moment in history, as in each and every moment in our American history, there is more than ever tyranny and injustice that requires that same rebellion. 

This rebellion is patriotism. None of us should ever forget that.