Sometimes…I Remember. Fourth of July Thoughts

I was just thinking this morning, staring out over the water here as we crossed the bridge back into town, about different years and different times. I spent a great part of my adult life – twenty years – serving my country in the United States Navy. I can’t count the holidays I missed sharing with family and friends because I was somewhere in the middle of the ocean doing what I could to make sure the holidays continued, and that what they stood for mattered. When the Shah of Iran took hostages, I was there. When the “Gulf Tanker War” happened, I was on board the USS Guadalcanal being threatened with Scud missile attack if we passed through the Straits of Ormuz (We passed through just fine). I walked the flight deck of that ship with an M-870 shotgun and listened to Siouxie and the Banshees on my headphones (in those days it was a Walkman with tapes). I went into port in Saudi Arabia and I watched as our Seals blew oil platforms to hell and back. I was there when George Bush senior and his wife visited, and shook his hand.

This is a time of turmoil like I haven’t seen in decades. Even my friends are torn between supporting the president and his policies and their alliance to different political factions, movements, and religions. The economy has been devastated by greed. I believe as much as the next person that this country is built on the freedom to start out poor, do well, and become rich – but what we’ve lost is any sense of responsibility to country and our fellow man in the mix. The American dream is not equally available to all, and no amount of rhetoric will convince me it’s so. The nation is NOT predominately Baptist, or Christian – at least not one narrow-minded variety of that religion – and with scientists on the verge of proving the Big Bang Theory, I personally think it’s about time we started realizing that the only thing that matters is that we treat one another as we’d like to be treated. That includes people of all race, creed, faith, and sexual orientation. For Christ’s Sake, and Buddha’s as well, who the hell are any of the world’s leaders to say differently?

White Americans still harbor the deeply ingrained prejudices of our past. We are working through and past them, many of us are shamed by them, but they ARE our past. African Americans still harbor the resentments and carry the banners of years long behind them, and I can’t say that I blame them, but I do offer my hand and say… let’s move on. The world? It moves on no matter what we say or do. The country I served, and that I still believe in, is divided and those in charge long ago ceased representing anything but their own self-interest. At least, on the surface, that is how it seems.

I’m tentatively hopeful about this time in our history. I believe we’re moving forward into the future, rather than backward into more trouble. The future of America will have to be more aware of technology and the incredible power of the Internet and global communications. It will have to provide alternatives to oil dependency, and the greedy bastards who perpetuate it and still claim to be good Americans. It will have to be a time and place where cultures meet, and co-exist, a time where we quit pointing fingers and saying “He said,” “She said,” and start thinking in terms of “We,” and I don’t just mean that on a national level, but on a global scale.

I served in the military under a number of presidents. I respect what it takes to rise to that seat of power, and I understand that no matter what people think, nobody achieves it that is not a remarkable person in one way, or another. I’ve made my comments about George W. Bush, and I’ve had my issues with every one of them. I’m sure President Obama and I will not see eye to eye on every issue either. The one thing I remember – the one thing I learned from my grandfather, my father, and my time in service to the country, is that the man in the white house deserves our respect. He represents our nation.

If you jump up and down and scream and froth at the mouth about everything he does, you make yourself, and the country, look foolish. If you can’t be part of a solution that includes and works through those in power – the people actually enabled to do something at the current time, then you are doing nothing. You are serving no purpose whatsoever. If you become a part of actual dialogues that include no name calling, no party-line parroting, no websites with caricature pictures of your president where he’s called everything from a communist to a Muslim terrorist – you might be able to make a difference. If you think you have something to contribute, do that instead of holding demonstrations and putting the entire world on hold until 2012. Nothing can be changed without an effort to change it, and that doesn’t mean an effort to unseat the powers that be in four years…it means an effort NOW.

I don’t know that all the plans in place will work. Nobody out there, for all your yapping, knows that they will, or won’t. I know one thing…without the support of its people, America can’t function.

So, when I watch waves lapping on the shore on the Fourth of July, and I think about the years I spent, the sacrifices I made, and the world I fought to preserve – and I look at our government and the first actual changes I’ve seen in decades – I believe we really can move forward. I believe we can, and will change, and I embrace that.

President Obama, wherever you might be today, if you see this you have my support. You have the support of my family. That’s a responsibility I hope you take as seriously as I do. President Bush, on this day – of all days – I salute you. You gave eight years of your life, and though we very often saw things differently, I believe you served your nation to the best of your ability.

Forget Republican, Democrat, Conservative, Liberal, Libertarian, Baptist, Muslim, whatever.

America First. To my country I say…. Happy Birthday.

DNW