Happy 239th Birthday America

Wow, you’re 239 today.  In the grand scope of countries, I guess that makes you an adolescent.  Sure, you were prodigious as a youngster, taking that “know no better” attitude into battle with the Brits and defeating them.  As a toddler, you were comfortable serving your selfish status quo, and there were those big tantrums like the Civil War and then Civil Rights, in which the process for neither was Civil.  Now, you’re pubescent and growing. You think you know everything and also have a belief that you know what’s best for everyone, but that’s to be expected.  In this democratic rearing of a republic, it is we who support and guide you, who are reflected in your current state, pimples and all.  Whatever we love and loathe about you, we love and loathe in our collective selves.  We are all like a family. We get along with some. With avoid others. We stick together when attacked.  That’s how families, no matter their level of dysfunction, are designed to operate.

As you enter the final decade of your first quarter-century, I propose that “the village” present gifts that are suited for your growth.  This has nothing to do with politics and certainly nothing to do with the destructive partisan wars we are experiencing.  On your birthday, I look to our many subset collections of community that make up the mass and I ask participant citizenry, in the collections to affect that which surrounds them.  Take care of the people and things that you have influence over.  If a reasonable representation from the collective many, can do this, then the mass…the country…YOU, will grow into young adulthood, as an ever powerful nation.