INDEPENDENCE DAY

From my Facebook page:

I'm old enough to remember the days when the "Yanks," as we called them, were the great Liberators. "Got any gum, chum?" was the children's chant when the convoys rumbled by; our men were the joyful recipients of liberally-distributed packs of "Luckies" and the girls were mad about silk stockings. Wherever we saw them, Yanks all seemed to have big grins and endless supplies of food and goodies--both of which most of us Brits were short of in those days, especially the grins. Black and white, the GIs drove around in powerful tanks and bouncy jeeps, and they were welcome everywhere they went. They conquered the rest of Europe the same way. Not just with superior military power but with their big grins and the spirit of freedom they came to represent.

Not any more. Sadly, Americans are now pariahs on the continent that many of them gave their lives to liberate. Excluded. They are no longer welcome there. Where once they brought hope and a rebirth of exuberance and, when the war was ended, of economic prosperity, they are now banned from even setting foot. They are feared for spreading, not sustenance and endless promise, but disease. From what I hear, Europeans are astonished and dismayed by our submission to a would-be tyrant, a joyless, greedy blowhard who treats his country and the majority of its citizens with contempt and courts the adulation of those few of us most prone to violence and hatred.

To judge from their sympathetic demonstrations in the streets, however, a new generation of Europeans is also aware of something different that is happening over here--something they might recognize from the war days: a spirit of renewal that is manifest everywhere, in protests and demonstrations of solidarity that celebrate the real America; where the courage and generosity we witnessed during World War II are bubbling to the surface despite all efforts to repress them; where a (belated, surely) recognition that "Black Lives Matter" is at the forefront of a vast, mutually shared and urgent demand for a freedom and equality that is inclusive of all our citizens, not merely those of wealth and privilege.

Tr*mp and his associates and loyalists have made themselves irrelevant to this country's history. Independence Day does not belong to them, or their rabid, racist speeches and their military demonstrations; it belongs instead to the America that showed its true colors as far off as the streets of the village where I grew up, so long ago. Let's welcome it back this year, in November, with a resounding defeat of our current historical diversion into domestic me-first greed and global isolationism. And get back on track.