Dear America, I Miss You

Dear America,

I look at you sometimes, lately, and I wonder who you are.  Remember when God, family, flag and country mattered to you?  Remember when you were a melting pot, welcoming legal immigrants into your expansive embrace?  Remember when that meant that people who chose, of their own free will, to come here had to assimilate into their chosen adopted country?  When such immigrants were happy, even proud, to adopt the language and customs of their new, chosen home (or at least to encourage their children to do so)?  Remember when your name inspired pride and unity among your own people and, equally importantly, when that same name inspired (albeit sometimes grudging) respect (and, sometimes, deterrent fear) among the peoples of hostile lands?  Remember when your presidents weren’t longing for a “post-American” world?

I do.  I remember it well, and I miss it, I miss you.  I miss sleeping soundly at night, unafraid of my own government.  I miss awaking (from my now restless sleep) to a world that was relatively (relative to now, that is) peaceful, to a world in which the American president’s “red lines” were actual red lines and that crossing them had consequences, real and dire consequences. Consequences, let’s face it, that were more rhetorical than actionable . . . though if pressed. . . . .I miss knowing that your enemies were ours, that those who would hurt you, hurt me.  Now, it seems, unbelievably, that I am your enemy because I neither agree with nor support the horrible policies of your current president.  Me, an “enemy” of America, land that I love?  It’s just mind-boggling.  How did that happen?

I miss you, America.  You once stood strong beside our allies in Europe and Israel, but now, you do nothing but signal weakness and submissiveness to dangerous nations that once listened very carefully to our soft speech and understood all too well our big stick.

What happened to you, America?

Why are your own people angry and afraid?  Why is there so much despair and heavy sadness across the land?  Why are your people allowing themselves to be pitted one against the other?  Why, America, are you not standing tall?

My America–the old, trite version, apparently–would never fold, would never accept (much less embrace) defeat.  My America, the real America, is not a petri dish for communist ideals and totalitarian tendencies.  No.

Scratch that.

Hell no.

My America, the real you, celebrates unity, not division; encourages patriotism and doesn’t damn it as nationalistic or dangerous; my America believes in its people and doesn’t treat them like half-witted children or pets; my America rejects totalitarianism and embraces liberty and personal responsibility; my America trusts the people.

But . . . well, I have to wonder, is my America still there?   I look at you, today, and I am saddened beyond words.  So many of your people don’t look at and try to understand the failure, for example, that is the welfare state; instead, they blindly seek to expand it.  As if making larger something that doesn’t work will, perhaps miraculously, make it work, you know. . . once it’s big enough:  Gee, my amazing flying machine doesn’t work not because of the laws of physics but simply because it’s not big enough.

Uh huh.

We’ve fed the seemingly bottomless welfare state, catered to every “minority” from blacks to Hispanics to women, and we’ve not made a single dent in poverty since Johnson declared his “war on poverty.”  Instead, we’ve done the opposite and made more poor people, generationally poor people (i.e the people who are, by government’s explicit design, excluded from ever achieving the American Dream).  And at no time is this more evident than during Obama’s “management of America’s decline.”  Your poor are getting poorer, America, no mattered their race, but among blacks and Latinos/as, the rate of “new” poverty under Obamanomics is staggering. The first black president is lining the pockets of his political allies, bankers, and health insurers, and his multi-pronged attack on your poor and your middle classes is unprecedented.

But of course this is so, America. Obama wants to make you over, to “fundamentally transform” you, from the richest, strongest, best nation on earth to just another country steeped in corruption, fueled by fear, destined to fail.

Remember when the “norm” after a disaster was for your people to pull together and rebuild (ala Joplin, MO) and not to stand, helpless and scared, waiting for the feds to “solve” everything?  The free people of your country rebuild, on their own, competently and together; the people who’ve been re-enslaved by Democrats sit, wait, become the victims of violence and their own lethargy.  It’s really sad.  Whole neighborhoods were destroyed by Katrina . . . and are still destroyed all these years later.  Look, too, at Hurricane Sandy.  Again, these people depend on the feds.  They are, of course, ill-served, even mocked by Christie.  Americans, real Americans, don’t sit around waiting for the feds; they get to work and rebuild, they thrive.

We used to know this, America.

I miss you, America.  I miss the you who would look at what is happening now, see it for what it is, and reject it.  I miss the fearless you, the you who refuses to be cowed, silenced, oppressed by fear (of being called RAAACIST or imperialist or whatever).  I miss you, America, and I sometimes wonder if I’ll ever see you again.