It’s both: We can recognize the problems and still raise a glass—and our history shows us why. After all, you didn’t think that we 21st century Americans are unique in facing the difficulty of living up to our own ideals? That we’re facing unprecedented challenges to democracy?
Across 250 years, this ongoing experiment in self-governance has progressed far more than it has backslid, but backslid it has. Indeed, this at times dysfunctional relationship has gone through nightmares getting here, including: abuses of the free press, deplorable political violence, and the loss of trust in institutions, even the electoral process. And yet, recognizing the dual nature of the nation’s past doesn’t diminish the significance of its endurance. In fact, acknowledging the worst of the that history shows what we can overcome.
“A scene of horror and murder ensued, which for its barbarity has no parallel in the history of the American people.” That’s how the Maryland House of Delegate’s investigating committee described the blood-filled summer night of 1812 during which Jeffersonian Republicans in Baltimore pummeled, clubbed, stabbed, sliced, stoned, and dripped hot wax on the held-open eyeballs of Federalists. The Jeffersonian Republicans carried out this horror-film level of torture while singing, “we’ll drink their blood. We’ll eat their hearts.”
As for elections, it seems that we practically have a standing tradition every four years of declaring that this is the worst election ever. Are our recent elections really worse than 1828’s, when that brilliant-yet-boring New Englander John Quincy Adams was reported to have procured American girls for the Russian Czar? Newspapers called JQA—the President of the United States!—“the Pimp of the Coalition.” Meanwhile, his political foe and the election’s victor, Andrew Jackson, arguably lost his wife to libel: It was shortly after reading twisted takes on her romantic past that she suffered a fatal heart attack. “May God Almighty forgive her murders as I know she forgave them! I never can,” AJ declared, as he laid Rachel to rest before heading to Washington to start his presidency.
But here’s the reality: Most Americans today don’t even know what happened in that election. Not even the well-educated, in-the-know voters. That’s how much of a blip on the radar what once seemed a terrifying nosedive off democracy’s cliff is today.
I’m not saying Uncle Sam and Lady Liberty don’t have their problems. But there is a love, a connection, and a devotion to something greater that, so far, has won out.
Will we choose us again?
For me, that choice is a “yes.” I hope it is for you too. So happy Semiquincentennial, America. Here’s to 250 sometimes embattled, but also beautiful years. May we choose 250 more to come.
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