‘Oh say can you save?” entices Groupon in its July 4 email solicitation.
That might be one way people think they’re showing patriotism around Independence Day: by re-enacting their commitment to capitalist consumerism. But I prefer Planned Parenthood Voters of Iowa’s re-enactment of another longstanding American tradition: protest. The PAC protested the Iowa governor’s signing of a post-six-week abortion ban, among other things, at Monday’s Yankee Doodle Pops concert outside the Iowa Statehouse.
About the same time, against a backdrop of fireworks, party-goers gathered in a high-rise condo overlooking the Capitol to hear Reynolds’ Democratic opponent, Fred Hubbell, talk about a change in leadership.
Some may think it unseemly to pollute Independence Day celebrations with politics. But really, there’s nothing more patriotic, especially when it involves standing up for America’s values. And there are a lot that need standing up for.
Women’s rights are at stake at both the state and federal levels as the president prepares to appoint a Supreme Court justice who could tip the balance against legal abortion. But across the country, women are responding by marching, speaking out and running for office.
Migrant children as young as 3 years old, who were separated from their parents at the border and sleeping in cages, are now expected to appear alone before judges. But Americans are swarming to the border to volunteer on migrants’ behalf, and turning out by the hundreds of thousands at Families Belong Together rallies.
Climate change is real and last week’s extreme rainfall that flooded Iowans out of their homes is evidence. But with climate-change deniers in the political majority, policies to limit environmental pollution are being reversed and the president is pulling the U.S. out of the international Paris climate accords. Still, innovative grassroots campaigns to save the planet are mushrooming. One called #StopSucking aims to ban plastic straws, an estimated 500 million of which are used every day. Spearheaded by a California woman, the campaign uses humorous TV ads featuring celebrities professing “I suck” and vowing to stop using the straws.
Americans are innovative, and some of our problems have simple solutions, but we’re not using them.
Tens of thousands of Americans are dying from opioid overdoses. But insurance companies in some states won’t cover a drug called Buprenorphine. According to “NBC Nightly News,” the drug has been 80 percent effective at curbing the addiction in France, where it is free. Where are we on that?
Tens of thousands of people are dying from gun violence, the five victims at the Capital Gazette in Maryland just the latest chilling example. We could end that epidemic by passing meaningful gun laws.
I asked a couple I respect, who love celebrations and fireworks, how they were feeling about America on the eve of its birthday. They’re white native Iowans, successful professionals ranging from a few years to a few decades older than me. The husband was raised Republican — in the Bob Ray mold — and the wife Democratic.
The husband recalled his childhood July Fourths, when his father would fly flags attached by suction cups to his car. He remembered the fierce sense of patriotism he felt at age 7, when the U.S. got into World War II, and Americans were united. He’d retained his faith in the system even through controversial presidencies like Nixon’s and Reagan’s, and controversial wars like Vietnam. He saw leaders held responsible for their wrongdoing.
But that faith ended, he said, after George W. Bush led us into the second Iraq War under false pretenses, and the ones who paid for that were those killed and their families.
But this presidency is more destructive than any we’ve seen before, he says. Now he wonders if we wouldn’t be better off with a parliamentary style of government, where less power was vested in one person.
His wife always found security in the three branches of government keeping each other in check. Now she despairs at Congress’ refusal to keep the president in check. She’s ashamed and outraged by the border separations and attempts by government to control women’s fertility.
So she marches and makes daily phone calls to her two U.S. senators and one representative to express her concerns. And she takes pride in the version of America shown by all the protesters and the new wave of women running for office to uphold its responsibility to the vulnerable and its openness to newcomers.
The frustration I hear from so many people like this couple is grounded not just in Trump, but in the entire apparatus that props him up. That includes the 90 percent of Republicans who say they’d re-elect him even as he attacks minorities, Muslims, women and the press, lurches in his positions and tells lies he later contradicts.
“If you can’t say anything good,” goes the saying, “say nothing.” But please, to honor our nation’s birth, say something. Talk to the friends and neighbors you’re picnicking or parading with. Talk about the proudest moments and movements in America’s history and how we’ve lived up to them, or not, since. Talk about what worries you.
If your concerns include the gun violence epidemic, say something about it and how you’d stem it. Or talk about how to close the growing gap between rich and poor, educated and under-educated. Let’s make today matter by envisioning the kind of country we want and pledging to stay involved till we get it. Then America will have a happy birthday.
Rekha Basu is a columnist for the Des Moines Register. Readers may send her email at rbasu@dmreg.com.
