LET'S MAKE A DATE

Hear Me Out: How About a New National Holiday?

Instead of Independence Day, let’s consider “Interdependence Day.”

Opinion

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I’m not sure how many of us, across these United States, will be in much of a mood to celebrate on this fine 250th anniversary of our country’s founding, but the occasion at least calls for a touch of reflection.

A nation once described as of the people, by the people, and for the people has now been reduced—again—to a nation of certain people, by certain people, and on behalf of certain people. Two hundred and fifty years of incremental progress now falls under threat by those who put King George’s wealth and madness to shame. While our founders certainly understood that people of bad intention would, one day, stand for public office, a constitution written by men of honor failed to anticipate that their ancestors would lack the fortitude to stop such a usurper.

“A republic, if you can keep it,” indeed.

Those words of hope and warning were uttered by Benjamin Franklin to describe the new government being formed within Independence Hall. For two and a half centuries, through war and disease and depression, we have kept it. Yet it wasn’t until the nation found its pinnacle of power and wealth that the threat to its existence took its most pernicious form.

A cabal of white Christian nationalists and their remora have spent decades attempting to unravel the threads of our republic in favor of an oligarchic techno-fascist theocracy. And while “oligarchic techno-fascist theocracy” sounds like a good premise for a Phillip K. Dick novella, it’s not nearly as fun to live through than to read about.

While we can apportion some of the blame to our mad king, this movement predated him by decades. Perhaps centuries. America has always lived in uneasy tension between the mercantile and religious classes. The genius of today’s “conservative” movement was marrying the two, corrupting a theology of humility and service into one of arrogance and superiority while simultaneously transubstantiating the worst excesses of capitalism into its own gospel.

We have always celebrated the rugged individual. It was such hearty men and women, after all, who first crossed the Atlantic to settle (or steal, depending on your outlook) this wild land. We exhorted them to go west, to open the continent for the generations who would follow. We took “independence” not only as a credo for our new country, but for those who would fill its borders. We took, I think, independence too far.

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Presidential candidate Barack Obama was lambasted in 2012 after making the obvious point that nobody succeeds in this nation on their own. “You didn’t build that,” he said, referring to the roads, bridges, and other infrastructure created to allow American business to thrive—not to mention the laws, regulations, social services, and tax system that create the conditions for entrepreneurs to succeed. All of which are now under assault by the “pull yourself up the bootstraps” crowd, every single one of whom benefited from the same system they are now on the verge of destroying.

We’re being told that your failure to thrive is your fault alone, just as one’s successes are theirs alone. Neither is true. Because we are not a nation of individual sovereigns, but instead one of citizens. A people together. From many, one, as our money reads. The reverse is also true: from one, many.

One me. One you. Our lives are individual, but those individual lives ripple ever-outwards, just as the individual lives of our fellow Americans splash against our own. As we approach our 250^th Independence Day, I wonder whether we ought to create a new holiday acknowledging how much we rely on each other.

Perhaps April 15^th can be renamed “Interdependence Day,” to reflect the purpose of those hard-earned dollars flowing to the Treasury. A day of civic pride. A day of communal purpose. A day to remember that we give, we get back manifold: clean water, a helping hand when we need it, and roads on which to drive. A day to reclaim the nation as being of, by, and for we the people.

PLEASE COME!

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It’s an overly sentimental idea, I know, but maybe unbridled sentiment is in order during these cold summer days. The country may be sweltering, but the mood is decidedly chilly this July 4^th. It doesn’t have to be this way.

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