Back and "Fourth"

My own words come back to haunt me

I started work on this week’s column the way I started work on this same column last year: I looked back at my own history, reviewing what I wrote the year before and the year before that. Both columns centered on what it means to celebrate Independence Day in the United States these days. Can we, I wondered, genuinely say our nation stands for freedom and justice for all? (Big emphasis on “all.”) Is America really the land of the free? Was it ever?

In one of the columns, I supposed the answer would largely depend on who you ask, acknowledging that some would find the very question offensive, denouncing any additional criticism of the United States as unpatriotic. In an effort to beat those same critics to the punch, I also noted my familiarity with the common, star-spangled invitation to “just leave” if I don’t like it.

Because I have been posting my columns on the online writers’ platform, Substack, for the past couple of years, it was easy to find these previous pieces in the archive. I discovered they contained something that proved to be more valuable than I realized: my audio recordings of each piece. I started including an audio component early on, giving people the option to listen instead of read and, occasionally, adding some commentary.

Those recordings are what I’m sitting with most this year as we mark our country’s 250th birthday, and I find myself wondering if a deep sigh would be enough to blow out all those candles.

It’s not so much the things I wrote in these old columns: a crack about not meaning to ruin the 4th of July party by throwing tea in the pool, the inconvenient truth about the country historically treating equality with an attitude of “close enough” or “looks free from my house.” It’s not the quotes from poet Emma Lazarus, whose words about freedom are etched on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty, or the mention of the Supreme Court decisions that have, objectively, stripped Americans of their rights over the past several years.

Revisiting my words was one thing; hearing myself say them was quite another. From the moment I hit play, I was struck by the vibrancy I could hear in my voice, the upbeat pacing. I was even more struck by how foreign that sounds to me now.

This scares me.

It scares me because I know the energy I hear in those recordings was fueled by conviction, certainly, but also by a sense of hope and optimism, two things inherently woven into the fabric of American history, all of the history, all 250 years of it.

It scares me because I have barely noticed how the vibrancy has grown flatter, quieter; how I often speak more slowly now and sound more tired. I didn’t want to think I was losing hope, but hearing myself then and now, I hear it slipping.

Turns out, it’s a good thing I can hear it. I hadn’t realized how well the effort to make me more compliant by exhausting me with a barrage of endless absurdity, destruction, ignorance, and cruelty was working. That feels embarrassing and more than a little depressing to admit, but here we are.

The good news is: the voices from our nation’s past, even my own, remind me that this whole American experiment, the whole idea of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is, and always has been, a long game. It requires strength, vigilance, teamwork, and, for me, just enough optimism to keep nudging me back to the keyboard time and time again, if for no other reason than to leave myself a message: don’t give up.

Photo by Bri Tucker on Unsplash

This essay originally appeared in my column in the July 2, 2026 edition of the Perry Herald in Perry, NY.