I suppose for me, the grandson of immigrants, America has always been a kind of dream. I always saw it as a safe and welcoming place, a place of freedom and opportunity.
My grandmother, who saved me with her unwavering love, told me so many times that American was a miracle for her. A refugee from horror, poverty and persecution, she built a simple life in Providence, she ran a Mom and Pop store with my grandfather, it provided them with food and shelter and care for them and their three daughters for a half-century.
She was not permitted to own a store in her country, she watched as people in her family were murdered, tortured, dragged into the Army for many years, she lived in terror almost every day of her life.
It was unimaginable for her to believe that she could be safe in so powerful a country, and live her life without fear. She marveled at it almost every day, she told me never to take it for granted.
American Dreaming: the great experiment to find out if a free people can govern themselves justly and wisely, and remain free. It had never before happened in the world.
This was my idea of America. It was a narrow idea in many ways, a selfish one. America has always worked well for some people, and I didn’t know until later that it didn’t work well for many others.
I embraced this experience, this American Dreaming. I became a reporter, a writer, a producer, an author. Then I moved to the country and began another life. I spent my life telling the truth as I believed the truth to be. No one came to haul me off to jail or shoot me.
What could be more American than that, this idea of re-invention?
I have lived the life I wanted to live, for better or worse, no one has persecuted me or denied me my freedom, or told me where to live or what to do. This kind of life is what Jefferson had in mind for people like me.
As a Jew whose family suffered many horrors, I may be especially sensitive to people who feed on hate and fear. Like so many other peoples, we know where it can go, the unthinkable often becomes the reality.
Many people feel this American Dreaming has failed, or is not working for them. I hear them. But their arguments are deeply disturbing to me, they seem so full of hatred and ignorance I cannot feel easy about them.
Perhaps this is an outdated way to look at my country. I hear a lot of rationalizing, a kind so familiar in history.
While Canadian families adopt refugee families and welcome them, just a few miles away from us, right next door. We are on a different path. We blame them for their suffering, we loathe them for the dangers others pose to us, we would bar the door to helpless and homeless children, perhaps to my grandmother and leave her to her fate.
We seem to be losing our idea of ourselves as a strong and welcoming people. This is a very personal thing for me. I sometimes imagine that statue weeps in her harbor.
I had dinner with friends recently, and was jarred to hear a good friend say that he respected Donald Trump because he was the only politician telling the truth while all the other politicians all lie. I respect differences of opinion, and do not tell other people what to think, but I see my idea of the American Dream under great challenge and doubt. I have never seen this before on so large and angry a scale.
I have never known such prejudice to be embraced and excused and accepted. The unimaginable has become commonplace.
Is this really what truth is? That we slam shut the gates that let us in? That we bend to fear and hatred? Is this the new American Dream?
I think I will not discuss Donald Trump with my friend again this year. He is raising good and important questions that need to be raised, but I do not see much truth or compassion in him. Perhaps it is there.
I lost one friend a few months when she raged on about Hilary Clinton as a murderous war-monger. I challenged her language and anger. I am not especially political, but my ideology is about avoiding rage, I think. That is one way I have of preserving my dream. But it can cost you friends.
I cannot bear to become one of those angry people raging about Hilary, or even Trump, posting enraged and righteous messages on Facebook. So I will have to give up a bit of this freedom I have always had to say what I think whenever I wish. I will be careful, and that too is the loss of the dream. We are not supposed to be careful in what we think and feel. I fear my grandmother’s dream is being smothered, and I want to think about it, to keep what can be kept, and discard what ought to be discarded.
I am an older man, and I am not one to gripe about the old days, or complain about young people today. I do not think the world was a better world a generation ago. Nostalgia is trap, a bog, an excuse for hiding.
Young people today are amazing, smarter and more tolerant than ever before. I wish them joy and meaning and strength as they take over the world. My generation didn’t do what they hoped to do, and I wish the next one better luck.
I am a democrat (small D) and I believe in democracy. This year, I will have to decide where to stand and what to stand for.
The people get to decide what kind of country they wish to live in, and if you believe in democracy, and I do, then it is my job to respect their choice and change. Is our dream failing, or is it changing, as dreams do and often need to do? I guess we will find out soon enough.
I am not a revolutionary, I will not likely be out in the streets, throwing punches and changing. But I will tell you honestly, I sometimes fear that my country is leaving me and my grandmother behind, my American Dream is crying out in pain. I am not ready to let it go.
I hope to light small fires of goodness around my life and my work, to take photos that touch hearts and souls and make people smile. To remind people on my blog of the small joys and miracles of life that will never be on the news. And by skipping cable news and Facebook pages and Twitter mobs and blogs that hate.
I will love my wife every day in any way to keep love alive in this small corner of the world. I will honor my friends and care for my animals. I will use the freedom I have to grow and learn. And listen.
I would like to support this American Dreaming I grew up with and that meant to much to my grandmother and her life. I will do this by voting against hatred and fear when I can and speaking against it in a civil and respectful way. Perhaps I can adopt a family of refugees and make my own small statement to the world.
I think I will not rationalize and make excuses for people like Donald Trump, my grandmother taught me not to rationalize demagogues and haters. They grow like weeds if you let them, she said.
I was a reporter for a good long while and I think I know hatred and bigotry and the exploitation of fear when I see it. History tells us that good people need to speak when they see something they believe is wrong. Democracy is not a simple or easy process, it is not neat or pretty.
In the face of so much overwhelming hatred and hurt, I can only turn inward on this holiday. And wish my country strength and wisdom. I do love my country, i believe I owe my life to the American Dream in a number of different ways. Does this make me a patriot? I don’t know. This is a painful birthday for my country, a time of doubt, anger, self-searching and revelation. And, I guess, to be honest, a painful birthday celebration for me.
I do not feel like fireworks.
Perhaps I can help.
I am struggling to figure out how.
Sometimes I feel like a pinball, bobbing and weaving between flashing pillars of rage and fury and argument and absolute certainty.
I am not sure what my rightful or safe place is in this minefield. But it is not a time of fireworks and celebration either. I have to figure out where I stand in this, and what for, and so does my country, which I love. It is not simple, I do not live in the world of left and right, or black and white, or good versus evil, or lies versus truth.
My world is full of grays and shades, I’m not sure there is a place for people like me, or precisely where it is. There is no place in my grandmother’s dream for Trump.
So I retreat to my farm and my blog and purpose that is the way for me, my purpose, my path.
I will not be one of those people who demand that my friends agree with me, or deny them the right to feel differently. Neither will I be one of those people whose daughter and granddaughter looks back on his life and wonders why he didn’t speak when he should have.
I will hold my breath a bit until November and hope that my idea of the American Dream has not really died. And I will do what I can to support it and keep it alive, one day at a time, one person at a time.
