As is tradition, NPR broadcast a reading of the Declaration of Independence yesterday. As an aside, a NPR Twitter thread of the text of the Declaration created a right-wing tantrum a couple of years ago. The bulk of the text of the Declaration is a list of grievances against the Crown of the United Kingdom. One Twitter wag compared the Founding Fathers to a bunch of 'Karens'.
The lofty language in the Declaration rings hollow when one considers that the author, and majority of signatories, of the Declaration were slaveowners:
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 these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
Offer not valid if you're not a White guy... Frederick Douglass was keenly away of this hypocrisy.
With the preponderance of continual Black Lives Matter protests occurring across the nation, I have been thinking about what the American Revolution actually meant, and came to the conclusion that it wasn't a true revolution, and that the country which resulted from the success of the revolt merely continued a colonial regime under 'new management'. In vast swathes of the country, the social order was akin to feudalism, albeit lacking the complex web of obligations that the feudal system embodied. For many residents of the United States, the American system of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was actually a 'step backwards' from the typical society of the Middle Ages.
Seeing the protests, which are countrywide, and enduring, I am envisioning a genuine Revolution, one which will result in the adoption of the lofty ideals of the American Experiment for ALL residents of These United States. What are the protests besides a list of grievances such as those enumerated in the Declaration of Independence? What is the suppression of Black votes but an example of Taxation Without Representation?
The Declaration of Independence was written at the onset of the Revolutionary War, and was followed by a period of violence, privation, and uncertainty. I don't believe that the current situation is as frought as those uncertain years, but things could get uglier. Hopefully, the decent people of the country will assert themselves in November, revolt against the White Supremacist Oligarchy, and put into place a government which applies the premises of the Founders, such brilliant but such flawed men, universally. It's time to shed our centuries of post-colonial malaise and unite to form a mature society, that More Perfect Union enshrined in the United States Constitution.
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3 comments:
If all Americans could get to the point of accepting every member (regardless of gender, class, wealth, or sexual preference) of every human race (regardless of skin tone) is fully human, so many other problems would disappear.
It's 2020, but you still have got a long way to go.
Mind you, so does everyone else. Happy 4th July, BBBB
If all Americans could get to the point of accepting every member (regardless of gender, class, wealth, or sexual preference) of every human race (regardless of skin tone) is fully human, so many other problems would disappear.
The real tragedy is that fomenting bigotry tends to be a lucrative job.
They system, like all systems, is primarily structured to protect and sustain the status quo. It's the status quo for a reason, and changing it creates a brand new set of 'winners' and 'losers'. The problem with anticipating a 'new American revolution' is that America is much less a universal people with a national belief system than it is a group of warring tribes living in ideological fiefdoms we call 'States'. In any political structure, if the people with the most power - electoral, economic, political - want to live under a particular structure, they will deploy forces and the state's monopoly on legal violence and intimidation to achieve it. Mississippi might be changing their flag, but it remains to be seen if Missouri or Maryland change their law enforcement policies...
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