Today is Independence Day.  Here’s the Library of Congress history.

I have an affinity for history, and over the years, in travels here and there, it’s always been my inclination to stop and look at placards and stop in at museums of one sort or another, to get a taste of history wherever I happen to be.  Over my life, I’ve made 49 of the 50 states and have seen a great deal in person.  (It appears I’ll miss Alaska,  but no matter).  There’s a lot of history packed into this country’s 248 or so years.

For some reason, this day my mind zeroes in on  ‘Star Spangled Banner’ fort (Ft. McHenry) made famous by Francis Scott Key, which I visited 25 years ago this summer.  (Photo above).  Mostly it rests quietly in outer Baltimore harbor. Here is the map of the area.  In recent months Francis Scott-Key bridge, a couple of miles further seaside, was taken down by an out of control container ship.

Today I’ll take the easy route and just present the history of Ft McHenry as interpreted by its proprietors.  I’ve “been there, done that”.   As the saying goes, in a lot of ways, if you’re seen one fort, you’ve seen them all.  But they’re all unique in their actual history.  Here’s a story of Francis Scott-Key.  As you can read, history is complicated….

America is an exercise of now 248 years, of we the people building a country, now including 50 states: our United States of America.  What our forefathers have fought for, over the last near 250 years, is now at risk. At this July 4, the project begun in 1776 is in very real danger of collapse.

Here are some sobering thoughts to consider in coming days and weeks.

Here is my own post, “Joe“, for July 2, 2024.

Heather Cox Richardson‘s Letters from an American dated July 3, 2024.

Joyce Vance‘s Civil Discourse dated July 4, 2024; Joyce also posted overnight on a Congressional review of the dangerous 2025 initiative which is being rolled out by the far right.  Here is that column.

If you worried about disinformation before, my prediction is you’ve seen nothing yet to compare with this years firehose from the Radical Right, especially Artificial Intelligence (AI), the new terror.  Here’s a little primer from June 2: Disinformation StarTrib June 2 2024.  Know the original source and authorship of anything you receive.  If you can’t validate it, dismiss it.

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AN IMPORTANT MESSAGE TO THOSE WHO CARE:

Wednesday evening after I had prepared today’s message (the portion above the photo of the Civil War soldiers), I received one of those ‘e-forwards’ that became ubiquitous during the good old (and vicious) days of misinformation and disinformation. in the T-Party and MAGA days.

I have never blocked such information or its senders – they’re often nice people who I know personally, and I want to know what’s out there>. For a long time the garbage essentially disappeared. It appears to be back again, a resurrection as it were.

You will notice that my source of information about Francis Scott Key and Ft. McHenry is the National Park Service, and about Independence Day itself, the Library of Congress of the United States.  Plus, I actually visited the place in 1999.

The item in question (below) is a YouTube video about ten minutes long which has apparently been viewed millions of times and came to me from a reliable source I know well and respect.  It is inspiring.  However, I took particular interest in it because it is about  Francis Scott Key and the events at Ft. McHenry, which topic I had been drafting hours before receiving the content you see above.  The video has the clear implication that we are and were founded as a “Christian” nation, a favorite false trope commonly shared.

Like most such items, the narrator and audience in this forward are not identified, but seems to be a preacher in some large church somewhere.

The video slant clearly seems  “Christian”,  as the word is defined by somebody, and it is also disinformation, as is pointed out in the important note included with it at YouTube – be sure to read that note, it is easy to overlook  Below is the link, and with the above caveats I encourage you to take the time to watch it.  In my opinion it is one of the ‘cannon shots’ that we will be subjected to over the coming weeks.  We are in a war for the future of our nation.

If you wish, here’s the video, which I have watched in its entirety:

Caveat Emptor.  To be forewarned is to be fore-armed.  Best advice going forward: accept nothing at face value, especially if political in any way, verbal, audio, video, in writing makes no difference at all.  Everything from an unknown source has to be suspect, until more is known about the product being sold..

COMMENTS:

from John, driving across Utah July 4:

from Claude: That’s a great video and now I have shared it.   I found it compelling. It’s true we have become the empire we fought against but we wanted something different than a kingdom with an upper crust of royalty. Our election situation is so ironic.

response from Dick: Claude, who I’ve known for years, my generation, probably as if not more ‘progressive’ than I am, sort of threw me for a loop – his response to the video seemed much different from mine.  Therein lies a learning opportunity, maybe.

I. too, thought the video was powerful.  But there were a couple of perceptions advanced in the video that turned me off.  First, it’s been watched millions of times and arrived at least ten years ago and even the originator noted in the notes accompanying it that its version of history was slanted.  And of course, it focused on “Christian” – a quote attributed to George Washington that George Washington never made.  Ten years ago would be 2014, during the Obama years and during the always aggressive times of the Tea Party soon to morph into MAGA.  It is likely that the video was produced sometime in the early anti-Obama years.

It was also in the time period when the so-called White Christian Nationalist bunch was sharpening its swords and some were revising history to make us a  white Christian country, which we were not founded as being, and which is not supported by the Constitution.  And then there is the matter of what qualifies as “Christian”.  In my growing up in 1940s and 50s Catholics hardly qualified as Christian to some.  The Catholic/Lutheran and Protestant Ten Commandments are worded somewhat differently.  The Jewish Ten Commandments was dismissed.  Nowadays Christian Nationalists are much of the oxygen for the so-calleed conservative support for the ex-President.  Who qualifies as “Christian” defies an easy explanation.

Having said this, Claude and I and likely the person who sent me the video would get along just fine in a conversation, but the polarities remain, and have to be dealt with, one piece at a time.  I’m glad Claude was complimentary.