Insider voice memo 2: Happy Birthday, America
I’m temporarily lowering the paywall to celebrate my country’s birthday
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Good day you!
I’ve made the decision to temporarily let all my paywall content from this Substack roam free. I’d love you to get a feel for what I’m up to and push myself to experiment more. It feels appropriate to make this move on Independence Day in the United States.
What I’m sharing is an audio version of a birthday letter I wrote to my country. Maria Shriver’s Sunday Paper requested my submission along with those of several others. But for you, I wanted to share my actual voice, so listen to the attached audio file. Since this post is going to everyone, anyone can comment on it as well.
I wish you the best day possible, and I wish that for you every day.
Happy Birthday, America!
Dear Baratunde. Dear United States of America, my country, my homeland. Austria-born Arnold Schwarzenegger just tweeted "My dreams would have been impossible anywhere else, so today and every day, I’m grateful for the United States. .." On January 10, 2021, he said, "I grew up in the ruins of a country that suffered the loss of its democracy. . " and he compared the invasion of the United States Capitol to Kristallnacht. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50m42qF9Sas. We our facing the ongoing assault on our democracy by criminal gangs of white nationalists and by criminal gangs of Republican legislators, governors, and funders. We are about to lose our democracy to gerrymandering, also known as redistricting. We are very probably doomed to living the rest of our lives in a state of siege, in what relatively safe bubbles we can create. Like citizens of Russia, it may be that our best hope comes from expats abroad, writing about democracy from safe places abroad. But dear America, please remember the Declaration of Independence and the Emancipation Proclamation, and the Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education. Please remember that we are here because inequality is anathema to us, however enshrined in law and history. Please remember that we have fought it since 1619.
And please remember what Martin told us. "Lord, we ain't what we oughta be. We ain't what we want to be. We ain't what we gonna be. But, thank God, we ain't what we was." https://youtu.be/k7t35qDYHgc