We observed Memorial Day last Monday. I am an American.
My father fought in World War I. He lost his hearing. My brother fought in World War II — in the Ardennes, across Belgium, France, into Germany at the end of the war.
Gen. Charles de Gaulle decorated my brother, Neil Kane, with the Croix de Guerre after the war for saving the famous Cathedral of Chartres by directing all fire power around the cathedral, saving the beautiful stained-glass windows and the walls of the cathedral itself; an act that saved an important part of France’s artistic beauty for us — the future. Neither my father nor brother was a “sucker” or a “loser.” They loved the United States of America.
I was born in 1936. End of the Depression. My father had been laid off by Henry Ford from his bookkeeping job when, one day, Ford walked into their office and fired every third man — pointing his finger like a god. My father was one of the damned. He ate peanut butter and bread until he found a job at Chevrolet Gear and Axle when World War II began and factories revved up to create the machinery of freedom. It was a job he didn’t dare leave for the rest of his working life.
I’ve lived through World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War and the war in Afghanistan. All my sons were born too early or too late to have to serve, although they would have because they believe in this country, too.
This great country finally admitted the horror of slavery and is still trying to right that horrible wrong.
I remember the early voices of men who wanted to destroy what America stood for and the fear my parents felt, as they listened to Father Charles Coughlin and others on the radio, my father always calming us with, “It’ll be OK. This is America.”
This is America.
But is it now, amid the voices of men with no consciences, with no values, with no love of country, no respect for the real men who gave their lives to keep us free from dictators, men who think those who died for us are “suckers” and “‘losers”? From the internet I gleaned “The Five Signs of a Dictator”: Suspension of elections and civil liberties; proclamation of a state of emergency; rule by decree; repression of political opponents; not abiding by the procedures of the rule of law; and the existence of a cult of personality centered on the leader.
Chilling. I am very afraid we have no memory of what we fought and stood for. Now we are among leaders who would destroy what we have for their own power, their own enrichment, using the disadvantaged, using men and women who crave recognition, who have been kept down, kept poor, made to feel like lesser beings all their lives.
They have a right to be angry. This is the failure of America. Now the disadvantaged have a voice, but they are giving it to the wrong leaders. Now they have weapons, are powerful, and it doesn’t matter that so many of our children die, that the mentally ill can be armed, that life is cheapened, and rights threatened.
I am an American: Proud of our place in the world, ashamed of how many of our people don’t have a share in our wealth, aren’t offered real and important educations, aren’t given care for their elderly and babies.
So many treated like lesser beings in our courts for not wearing the right suits. Made fun of by politicians who would keep them as they are so that a false god might move in and laugh at them, use them, smirk and scorn them, yet bask in his false glory, and call the best among us “suckers” and “losers.”
I am an American. Proud and ashamed. Hopeful we can work on what’s wrong while we celebrate the rights we have won: Black and white. Women and men.
A united citizenry in a flawed country with the greatest hope, still, for an even greater tomorrow. I pray for us.
I love every one of us. We are part of the greatest experiment the world has ever seen.
I AM AN AMERICAN.