Birthday Reflections on America and Taking Her Back
In the ’90’s I went to college, married and started my family. Politics played a larger role in my life. Clinton, his awful policies and even worse morals dominated the news. I worried about what kind of world I was bringing my small children into. Our economy wavered, friends and family lost jobs.
Terrorism started playing a larger role in our national consciousness, as well. It seemed to ramp up in startling proportions. As Americans, we had always felt insulated from it. It always happened “over there.”
February 26, 1993 changed that, if only slightly, when the World Trade Center in New York City was bombed. Six people died and over 1,000 were injured. Then April 19, 1995, Oklahoma City. A domestic terrorist attack that killed168 people, 19 of them children. Khobi Towers, the Unabomber, The US Embassy bombing in Nairobi, all building to the worst terrorist attack on US soil, September 11, 2001.
Now we aren’t afraid of one nut with a nuke, but everyone around us who looks different than we do, or maybe not.
The 2000’s brought instantaneous news, smart phones, computers and constant background noise into my life. It also brought raising awesome kids, loss of a parent, new friends and new opportunities. It seems we never stop growing.
Through the last 13 years I’ve raised one child to adulthood and another a few years behind him. My children are in college and high school, and I wonder how they will write this kind of reflection two or three decades from now; what kind of world will they will live in, and how the fears of terrorism on their very young lives will shape them. I, too, tried to shield them from the worst of the world when they were young, but with instant news that’s not always easy.
So, as I look back, I yearn for the carefree days of my very young years, wonder how things might have been different if “I knew then what I know now” and made different choices, but don’t we all? As I start my 46th year, I look at where we are headed and it frightens me. But I know one thing, American is stronger than the un-American decisions being made in DC.
My birthday wish today is that we all take a stand and take our country back.
Image: source: Candles; author: Joey Gannon from Pittsburgh, PA; Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license
