On July 4th American communities throughout the country again began to celebrate and commemorate our day of independence. I watched with a heavy heart, as men, women and children reveled in a tradition officially mandated a federal holiday in 1941, but a tradition of Independence Day that goes back to the 18th century and the American Revolution.
The Fourth of July has been a day to remember the genesis of the American Dream for more than two and a half centuries. American independence was an untried test of human passion and tenacity that became an evolving, expanding and broadening experiment of human growth, human passion and human altruism. It was an idea and a vision conceived by men of imagination and character, with the obstinacy to believe in the commonality and nobility of the human spirit and the shared faith of hope and inspiration of like-minded individuals who yearned to feel the freedom to be, and sense the sovereignty of life and of living.
The American Dream was never easy, because it was not just one dream, but dreams of every kind and type. It was a melting pot of ideas, visions and, yes, dreams. Dreams are about new and novel ideas and visionary thoughts, which are always laden with flaws and faults and even weaknesses. And, as a result, it was the process of trial and error, corrections and redirections that led to the realization of one government, under law, with liberty and justice for all, in order to fulfill and live the many dreams that inspired and motivated the mind, the heart and the spirit of new Americans.
I, like so many others, have never lived in a nation governed under the iron fist of autocracy of any kind. It is a study of history that reveals the uniqueness of the American Dream(s) and the odyssey experienced by generations of Americans since the seeds of choice, liberty and sovereignty began to blossom and finally bloom, in a nation filled with ingenuity, creativity, vision and inspiration.
Americanism has never been without criticism, without blame, without regret. But it has learned, grown and moved forward to the next level of human awareness and consciousness. And many of us have been a part of that process and that growth, with the idea of hopefully handing over to the successor generation a more stable and perfect union.
Until now.
For the first time in American history we have experienced the nightmare of an American coup. Instead of moving forward and upward toward a more stable and perfect union, a president of the United States decided that his dream, and only his dream, would become the American Dream, after centuries of shared and collective adherence to listening to the voice and will of the people.
The nightmare continues across the nation, with the now ex-president continuing to resurrect his failed coup, and take America to a place and a time it has never known before. A place of suppression, minority supremacy, domination, constraint, restriction and abolishment or abandonment of long-established civil and human liberties, freedoms and rights. A place darker and more dangerous than even our history has recorded. That process has already begun.
The Fourth of July should be a day of celebration. It should be a day to dream and to pass forward the torch of our civil and human liberties to the next generation of Americans. Independence Day should be a day of continued belief in the American multi-colored dreams, and of the continued dignity of and for all men, and a day to reconfirm the continued freedoms that have made this nation great. Instead, this past Fourth of Day we found ourselves on the precipice of bringing to life a nightmare of unimaginable consequences.
It is hard to see false patriots flying our flag in front of their homes, and displaying fabricated glee for the very democracy they are attempting to overthrow. They have already exposed themselves, as they continue to overtly and obscenely betray the very country and notions they once believed in and loved. Why have they closed their minds, their eyes and their hearts, to the very ideas and ideals that inspired the imagination and the dream of their ancestors?
Independence Day, like every day in America, is a day to think about these words: “We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among them are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.” Believe what you see and what you hear. We should not let the corrupt and degenerate words and actions of those who cannot see beyond their own self-serving arrogance and greed, decree what we can and cannot believe, and what we can and cannot dream.
On the Fourth of July, our Independence Day, I did not celebrate, as I remembered the America Dream, while living through the nightmare of an ongoing American coup.
Al Garcia lives in San Juan.
