we could do better

This is the 4th of July weekend.

It is a time to be thankful and to be proud. Unfortunately it also a time to listen to a lot of jingoistic nonsense.

America is a great country. I am glad to be a member, but that was purely luck, nothing brilliant on my part. America does good things and we do awful things. We are generous at times and stupidly stingy at others.

We are so sure that our system of government / economics is “god’s will”, that we have allowed unchristian greed to almost destroy our country. I wish I could say “Thank goodness, change is here.” But it is not.

For every thing that would benefit the country as a whole, there are people who would have their golden moment foiled and so they block change. It has been said that California is ungovernable, and the US is not far behind.

We have given up our idea of what is the better good for all, and replaced with what is in it for me.

In my short life, I have known a relatively few non-americans, but the ones I have met were fiercely loyal to their countries, even if we think they were horrible. In my travels around America, I have stopped in the most awful places you can imagine and found people who thought they were right in the middle of paradise.

Most of that is good. The Big Book talks a lot about contentment (and condemns covetousness routinely).

I am content to be an American, but just as I am embarrassed to be called a Christian at times, I am sometimes embarrassed to be an American.

We could do a lot better, but I fear we won’t.