As I reflect on this latest Thanksgiving, I am reminded of the love I once had for a United States that is long gone. In some ways, it reminded me of my American grandmother and the story is somewhat similar.
My American grandmother was a beautiful woman. She was tall and held her figure well into her later years. I never saw her without perfect hair, make-up, pearls, and a dress or a skirt and blouse. In many ways, my wife reminds me of her – both are classic 1940/50s pin-up model types who value the importance of beauty and family.
My grandmother would make a feast for the love of her family. As children, she ensured we had plenty of fresh baked cookies. My brother and I would get excited as we neared her home. You could smell the cookies through the door and the sound of Frank Sinatra or Nat King Cole’s Christmas music bellowing beyond it.
As she got older, other women filled the role and yet, they never seemed to do it the way she did it (until I met my wife). Their turkey was fine, and the sides were tasty, but there was a certain lack of pristine pride. They did not get “pretty” to cook a meal. They did not use the fine dinnerware or serving dishes. They did not have cookies baking for the little ones to eat immediately upon arrival. It was sort of slapped together, as if an obligation had been satisfied. Eventually, she passed away of stomach cancer while I was a Marine stationed on Okinawa – an island that, ironically, her first husband died upon, attempting to take as a Marine.
There was a time when the United States was young. She was proud to be beautiful. She ensured the world saw her at her finest. Her abundance was a gift to all within her home. She embodied a light, unblemished by age, and loved by all at her table.
As the United States got older, her future generations cared less about the promises they inherited. They no longer sought to look beautiful. They no longer appreciated the abundance within. They no longer loved the same way. They became bitter and dismissive. Eventually, the United States died of a cancer within itself, too.
A country that was once so outstandingly pretty and blessed. A country that was once proud and ensured the world knew that pride. A country that once walked confident in a better future.
Today, it is country that no longer feels as it once did. It has lost its sense of self. It has become a promise that is no longer shouted nor whispered.
She is gone and that is sad.
The son of a recent Irish immigrant and another with roots to Virginia since 1670. I love both my Irish and Southern Nations with a passion. Florida will always be my country. Dissident support here: Padraig Martin is Dixie on the Rocks (buymeacoffee.com)
She’s still here. Sprinkled about amongst the failed state. Utopia ( or as near to it as can realistically be achieved ), exists “within” the failed state. They overlap and coexist. The trick is, to “restructure” America in a way that “distills” THAT America into one new Republic : CSA II. It’s 100% doable and now’s the time to brainstorm / thinktank presentable blueprints to a public that’s had it up to here and is “already talking about Balkanization.”
However, time is of the essence. As we speak the cancer is winning … with their famous strategy : “Inch by inch it’s a cinch.” What are WE doing, “inch by inch?”
One of many things we need is a bigger better staffed better funded version of SPLC & ACLU. Our versions would get criminal and civil charges filed against big tech / big bank for any censoring, deplatforming and asset forfeiture of white Christian conservatives.
I feel the same about the Country myself. Not for what it was, or what it could be, but for what it is becoming. Machiavelli once stated, those who inherit a State, not knowing struggle nor Strife to aquire, or maintain it, will fall into softness, only seeing material gain. Than they lose it, because they lacked the desire to preserve it.
I’m old enough to remember the America you describe but, in hindsight, just as cancer is in the early stages a silent killer, I think the disease was present even in my youth. Your article brought to mind ‘The Dispossessed Majority’ by Wilmot Robertson:
“The most truly disadvantaged are those who are hated for their virtues, not their vices; who insist on playing the game of life with opponents who have long ago abandoned the rules; who stubbornly go on believing that a set of highly sophisticated institutions developed by and for a particular people at a particular point in time and space is operational for all peoples under all circumstances. p. xi. There will be no end to its dispossession until the Majority learns to reject all, repeat all, the main currents of modern liberal thought; and there can be no such rejection until the true nature of the illiberal forces which engender and direct modern liberalism are clearly understood.” p. 549.
Wilmot Robertson, ‘The Dispossessed Majority’