These Here United States

This is July 5, 2026; one day after our celebration of the 250^th Anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

I remember July 4^th, 1976, the Bicentennial celebration.  It’s a little strange to me to realize it’s been 50 years since that time; I guess I still have a hard time wrapping my head around having been alive for over half a century!  I sure don’t feel like a guy a hop, skip, and a jump away from reaching my 60^th birthday, but here I am.

The sad truth is that in that half-century I’ve seen this country go through highs and lows, but lately it seems like there’s been more lows than highs.  I see families and friends suffering fractured bonds over political ideologies and different partisan bias.  I’ve had friendships of my own end acrimoniously, sometimes despite my best efforts, and such has haunted me when it happened.

It hurts my heart sometimes to see some people who seem fiercely determined to characterize our country as fundamentally broken somehow.  I see it in the news and on podcasts often enough to almost start to wonder if I’m the one who’s in the wrong.  Maybe it’s my viewpoint that is flawed/fractured/wrong and I’m the one who needs to reevaluate how I see things?

Except that I now find myself looking over the footage of tourists from all over Europe – from the UK, Germany, France and other nations – who have come here for the World Cup, but have been fed a lot of stories about the United States…and who are being recorded on the verge of tears, amazed by this country and its people, and finding the Americans they were taught to think of as arrogant, ignorant, xenophobic, etc. are instead proving to be generous, kind, helpful, and good-natured.  The Europeans stand open-mouthed, staring at things we take for granted, with many suddenly expressing a desire to legally emigrate and make these here United States their new home…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1_RKu-ESCY&list=RDb1_RKu-ESCY&start_radio=1

…And suddenly I think that maybe – just maybe – we’re all going to be okay.

J.R. Winton

J. R. Winton