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The Fog on the Fourth
4 July 2023
Once again the Fourth of July has rolled around. And with it, here at least, the fog. While the rest of the country looks upward at bombs bursting in air, we are resigned to observing nothing at all lighting up the fog.
Golden Pavilion. A skilled nursing facility decorates for the Fourth.
You would wonder, as a resident of this otherwise marvelous place, what all the fuss was about.
That, though, strikes us as not only a description of our local annual predicament celebrating the nation's birth but as a metaphor for our time. The country itself is fogged in. The fireworks obscured.
Who are we as Americans? What is America?
The polls suggest more than a little confusion about what matters to the people that inhabit these shores. But those polls, we think, only thicken the fog.
Who are we? It isn't clear.
We don't recognize ourselves in each other. We see, instead, some deficiency or evil, some ulterior motive, some failing.
And we aren't entirely wrong. No one is perfect.
But this country has always been about creating "a more perfect union" not a perfect one. About trying to meet halfway. About respect. About dialog.
Put down the signs. Take off the paraphernalia. Listen to each other. Make your case. Vote. Respect the outcome, win or lose.
And that fog will clear.