A Fourth of July or a July 4th?

So why does this Fourth feel like it has little feeling?

Is it because Edward Snowden revealed what our democratic republic has allowed private contractors to collect on us? Is it the inability for Congressional leaders and the White House to work towards any goal that would better the nation? Is it because our infrastructure is badly in need  of repair and really rebirth, such as a high speed rail that could connect small and big cities alike throughout America? Why this year..? Why does it just feel like stagnation instead of a patriotic nation?

The nation is, for the most part, the same as it’s been other years, really. 

Throughout the 2000s, in the post 9/11 world we have come to accept as our profound reality, the nation fought like cats and dogs, and Democrats and Republicans, about issues of war and peace, economic policy and social justice.. we hated each other, we despised opposite opinions.. and yet somehow those Fourths of July still felt like … the fourth of July.

Until this year.

And I cannot help but go back, again, to what we know now is occurring at the highest levels of national security.

What Edward Snowden revealed about the government was one thing. But how about our reaction? Or lack of one.. That reveals more about the nation than anything else.

For we are not outraged.. we are not even defending the government’s actions. Instead we have come to accept them..

We are fine with pat downs that seem inappropriate at airports.. We are seemingly more worried about ‘safety’ than we are about civil liberty.. We seem to have accepted long-term high unemployment .. we appear to be ready to simply put up with machinery in motion replacing human beings in action in assembly plants and even restaurants across our great land..

The mountains with purple majesty.. well, maybe they are a little tarnished.

In 2008 when Barack Obama was elected, anything and everything seemed possible. 

In 2013, we wonder why nothing that would have been possible ever happened. We question why we became even more divided.. why we chose to go the path most taken as opposed to the one not..

However,  Americans are good people. That is the saving grace.

That is the truth that will carry this nation, tarnished and angry, into another year…

Great societies go through great upheaval.

What America needs to know is that civil disobedience, truth and justice, social equality, and passion for freedom and love of country all fit together very well. The American experience is unique in the world, and unique in history.

We’re young when  compared to other nations–dynasties that collapsed in our history should give us pause and allow a lesson to be told.

Sometimes things don’t happen as they should..

In the Wonder Years, Winnie and Kevin didn’t get together.. their past was in the little town on the Fourth of the July but their future wasn’t.

And to think of it… America has been through tougher and rougher times. 

Civil Wars.. World Wars.. and a racial divide that created generations of hatred.

So compared to that, we aren’t faring that bad.

So why does this just feel like July 4th instead of the Fourth of July, 2013?