400

For me personally this number means more today than the number 250. It’s a representation of many years of (sometimes) consistent effort and brings me a good measure of happiness.

250, on the other hand, currently does not do that. But then, in the big scheme of nations and cultures I suppose 250 years is a relatively short amount of time. Nations and empires have lasted for much less time than that, of course, but they’ve also lasted for centuries longer than that as well. The assorted horrors that color my experience of 250 and dampen my mood as I look toward tomorrow are in fact both horrifying and not new.

So here, in my four-hundredth post on this blog, on the day two-hundred and fifty years after the generally accepted birth of my home nation, I’ll say as I have said before that I do believe in this nation. I uphold the ideals it was founded under, even though we’ve never actually achieved them. Equality in our very nature, rights to life and the pursuit of real happiness, liberty and justice.

For ALL.

These ideals haven’t changed. What it means to be an American hasn’t changed. But the ruling party, composed of oligarchs and striving for fascism more blatantly every day, is not American. They’ve pulled the most successful grift of our age, succeeding with lies and deceit targeted at basic human selfishness in seizing power by exploiting the fears of the vulnerable ignorant, and with that power they’re doing everything they can to dismantle the tools that will tear them down. 

Because I don’t believe they’ll succeed, ultimately. I choose to still believe in the ideals America was founded under, and I choose to believe that most of my fellow citizens do as well. And that belief gives me hope. Perhaps, in the end, we’ll discover that there never was much hope.

Just a fool’s hope.

But that hope is necessary for the fights still to be fought. Fights for justice. For liberty. For the rule of law, the freedom of every person to choose, and the health and safety of the most vulnerable among us. So let’s remember, even for a day, that we are not so different from each other. Let’s remember that selfishness is unAmerican. That exclusion is unAmerican. That division is unAmerican. The UNITED States. It’s in the name.

And also, 400 posts. Who knows when we’ll have 400 more; it’s entirely possible that I’ll have shunted myself completely off the internet by that point. But maybe if we can vote out the backward-thinking simpletons that lied their way into power in our executive branch and the rest of the political party that would rather sell their nation to pseudo-Nazi's than give a little grace to their neighbors, we can go about fixing the web next.

After all, this valley is at least partially about dreams.