Independence Day 2025
TRAVELS IN MY DISCOMFORT ZONE
Not gonna lie: From my present-day perch in northern Thailand, I admit to being more than a little discomforted by what I see taking place in my native United States. It’s not the country I grew up in. My early travels away from traditional American society gave me a much broader, dare I say “liberal” perspective than many of my friends who didn’t stray far from the towns where they grew up. But those who did travel, and those who learned to embrace cultures and belief systems very different from their own, are as shocked by the political climate of the modern U.S.A. as I am.
The first time I spent a Fourth of July away from my parents’ home, I was 18 years old and living in Honolulu as a summer intern for the morning newspaper. It was a remarkable time, and not just because Neil Armstrong walked on the moon and Jimi Hendrix played the national anthem at Woodstock. Chief Justice Warren Burger, newly appointed by President Nixon, voted in favor of the landmark Roe v. Wade case that established a woman's right to an abortion. Gay right activists rioted with police in Greenwich Village, New York, setting a symbolic tone for the growing LGBTQ movement. Although boxer Muhammad Ali, a black American of Islamic faith, was convicted of draft evasion for refusing to serve in a war that he didn’t believe in, Cesar Chavez, a Mexican-American veteran of the U.S. Navy, stood up for migrant farm laborers in California’s Central Valley and won a collective bargaining agreement with nonviolent tactics. (The “Manson family” murders shocked Hollywood, although none of those involved were illegal immigrants.)
On July 4, 1969, I was proud to watch the fireworks that exploded over the Pacific surf. Seven years later, on July 4, 1976, I stood with American friends near the banks of the Yarra River in Melbourne, Australia, saluting the red, white and blue. It was good to be an American, a citizen of a country that weighed individual rights and beliefs, regardless of gender, race, religion or national origin. I don’t see that happening now in the country of my birth. On July 4, 2025, there will be no fireworks.