"Elena's Musings on Independence Day"
July 5, 2006/Dr. Elena Hartwell
I watched the fire works. They troubled me. Something about watching explosives
for fun when we are at war. I listen to the music choreographed along with the
light and flames, Queen, for a country where gays can’t marry. Ray
Charles and Aretha Franklin, for the thousands of African Americans left with
nothing in New Orleans.
Celebration for the military while former private Steven D. Green a 21-year-old
American is accused of raping and murdering a pregnant woman and her family in
Iraq - she may have been as young as 15, her sister was 7. If young Steven
didn’t do it, another American did. What are we teaching our soldiers?
The deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq steadily climb while the government ‘stays
the course.’ And what happens to our service men and women when they come home?
Missing limbs, missing eyes, missing places in their hearts and minds? The same
government cuts their benefits and hides them from the media.
I wonder what our founding fathers would say, or even more important, the
mothers.
On the Fourth of July, North Korea tests missiles over the Sea of Japan.
Will we attack them too? Where will the soldiers come from? Haven’t we used up
all the Americans willing to die for oil? Or Freedom? Whose? That’s never been
made very clear to me, how killing Iraqis secures my freedom. And more
importantly if we are free, why couldn’t we chose our own president, instead of
this sham cowboy put into office through lies, rigged elections, and a brother
in Florida.
We celebrate the 4th to commemorate what this country is founded on, and I
wonder is that the slavery? Or the genocide? Perhaps it’s simply the money made
by both.
We created an entire system based on cheap goods and big profits for a select
few, and we wonder why our health system is based on cheap goods and big profits
for a select few.
No child left behind? Except the ones I see every day in my classroom that can’t
write a simple essay, that can’t find a book in the library, that have never
seen a play, or heard a symphony, or painted a picture, and these are high
school graduates, not grade school children that still have a chance at a strong
foundation. I shudder at the thought of the students I’ll have in 10 years, the
ones coming through now.
Listening to the Star-Spangled Banner, my first thought is I don’t like
the woman’s voice, my second is at least she got the words right. My last
thought is what are we singing for? We sing about the flag coming through a
night of war, of rockets and bombs bursting. It is supposed to be the past, but
it could be our future.
What will we sing when we realize not only that we have lost, but more
importantly that we never should have fought in the first place? That those that
have died were led there by a puppet king and his stable of greedy old men. How
bad will it have to get before people finally see what has happened here in the
land of the brave.
This is what keeps me up late on the night of the 4th of July, the musings of
this American.