The 4th of July.
Jiayuguan, Gansu Province, China, July 4th, 2014.
Salaroche


And what’s there left to celebrate in America on the 4th of July? Well, perhaps not as much as some of us would like, but definitely there’s still plenty of reasons to raise a glass of wine or beer on this day and have a toast or two for the good ol’ US of A. And this I say with particular zeal after living on and off for a few years in different regions of this constricted land called China.

Can you picture yourself living for some time, as I have done thus far, in a country where High School and University students don’t even have a clear idea of the meaning of Democracy? A country where 99.9999 percent of the population has never voted in any election? A country where the concept of Civil Rights or the idea of political demonstrations is taboo? A country where all the news the locals read has to be approved by their one-party, authoritarian political system?

Unlike France, Italy, or any other country in the world, since the American Revolution (1765-1783), the US has never reverted to any sort of royal, dictatorial, or authoritarian political system, fact that makes America the longest ever standing Democracy in the history of the world.

The American Civil War, the first Red Scare of the 20s, the McCarthy years of the 50s, and, in a milder sense, the G. W. Bush years at the beginning of this century, may have brought the US to the brink of inflicting serious damage to its Democratic system, but the resilience of the American Revolutionary Spirit prevailed over those retrograde forces and the US still stands today as a beacon of freedom to the rest of the world.

I deeply disagree with a few of the recent decisions made by the Supreme Court and I strongly disagree with regressive political forces such as are represented in the Tea Party and in some Libertarian political strands, but I still praise America greatly for its unyielding freedom of speech, the resilience of its founding principles, and the patent creativity of its people.

And with the above in mind, I raise my glass and say: God Bless America.

Salaroche