Everett on the Fourth of July 2019 is not unlike 10,000 Everetts just like it all over the nation. There is one great exception this year over all other modern years. And that is the completion, the opening and the final launch of the Encore Boston Harbor Casino and Hotel. As great a moment in the city’s modern history the casino and the hotel are, this July Fourth holiday stands alone in dwarfing its significance.
We are a city filled with thinking people, hardworking men and women, immigrant people from all over the world, legals and illegals, old and young, rich and poor, happy and sad, women and men, gay people and heterosexuals, LGBTQ and transgenders. You name it, we have it here in Everett – and we have it all over the nation.
On this Fourth of July many of us should wonder when we hear one news outlet or another saying that Russia should be our enemy, that we should fear Russia above all, that for the American President to share a stage with the President of Russia is somehow an abomination, we need to listen to such reports that tend to drone on and on during the news cycle to ask ourselves this question, among several others that we should ask ourselves on this July Fourth: is there really anyone out there among us who believes for a moment that the Russians could defeat the United States of America? We heard just days ago that the United States didn’t extend an invitation to the Russians to sit at next year’s commemoration of the end of the Second World War.
Have we gone mad? Is there not even the most modest understanding of World War Two history which beseeches us to thank the Russians for their contributions in defeating the Nazi monster that threatened to overwhelm mankind? Are we meant to think that the Russians did something wrong to us, that by playing their own game and us playing ours, that somehow we haven’t reached the great pax Americana? Are these media folks—former Cabinet officials, former CIA heads, former leaders of great industrial countries and industries—calling for Donald Trump to have a war with Russia to prove just how great an adversary they are? And if they are, what level of madness about
what is just and what is unjust, reasoned and unreasoned about some of the questions we’re all asking one another on this the 243rd year of American independence?
As we celebrate another day of American independence in the understanding of what has come before, from so many small apartments on so many crowded streets, in such a proud place like Everett when it’s men and women were dying to keep America free during the greatest battle in human history maybe we need to think about how unfair we have all become to one another. And to how limited the design of our thoughts by the media has reduced us to actually thinking we’ve done something right when we don’t welcome the heroic Russians to the table to celebrate the peace over Naziism and slavery which they led.
There will be other battles that Americans will be caused to carry arms for. There will be countless new situations arising from time to time for as many Independence Day celebrations we have to go. This we know. The lessons of history imposed upon us by their nature need to be higher to maintain, to protect, and to preserve the United States of America. This weekend Independence Day will prove to be an unvarnished gem of many of those that have come before. Fireworks. Cookouts. Camaraderie.
With our children, with our parents, with our grandchildren, with our loved ones, our friends our comrades in arms celebrating what is quintessentially the American holiday of all holidays. The only thing we have to fear are the enemies from within. Not our fellow human beings around the world who rely on our power, culture, economy, and mightiness whenever it’s necessary. With hot dogs and hamburgers, with sushi and tofu, with unsweetened drinks, that good old, Coca Cola, fireworks displays across the Nation we will again let freedom ring proudly and without restraint in the hope that our might will always do right, and that the American way of life shall never leave the earth.
Happy Independence Day.