(ThyBlackMan.com) When I joined the military in 1998, I fully understood that I was signing a blank check to the United States of America for and up to my life if so required in the defense of the nation, the Constitution, and our freedoms from enemies both foreign and domestic. This oath I took of my free will and even in my retirement I still recognize that by taking that oath, it will never expire. Those of us who did so develop a bond not only to each other but to the country we serve. Some of us are fortunate enough to have this sense of pride instilled into us as we grew up in Anywhere, USA. The United States is the only country in the world – as far as I have seen and I’ve seen a lot of countries – that hyphenates and distinguishes its citizens in terms like Asian American, African American, Mexican American, etc. Other countries will categorize you based on your assimilation into their country or your preferred country/nationality of origin. You are either a Frenchmen/woman, German, Italian, Korean, or Nigerian. Regardless of your shade or place of origin. It is where you are now and how you identify as.
Americans have a lot of pride. But we tend to discount that pride when we have the need to hyphenate ourselves. We create this identity crisis, this particular yearning to maintain that selective identity that may be pretty obvious to others – if not will make a great conversation piece if chosen to be explored further. American culture is a culmination of many cultures from around the world with a splash of this and a dash of that to make it unique. Very few places in the world exist with OUR flavor of doing things. We proudly carry the moniker “Stupid Americans” when we’re abroad because while we are in our infancy compared to the rest of the world, we demonstrate we are the best in all that we do….
Well, we used to! We are not proudly competing on the world stage in many socio-stratospheres anymore. While countries from around the world are looking to pour into the US because of its open border crisis, they are not coming because they have better opportunities to success in life – as once was the reason – they are coming because they have the opportunity to forge a new nation. Judeo-Christian values, Capitalism and Free Market enterprise are things going to the wayside. We are ushering in “Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance” (ESG) and “Cancel Culture”. Politics has become an utter joke and frankly a disgrace on both the national and international level. We have politicians elected to office that have never read the Constitution, or any of the other founding documents; yet we wonder why they are not following the Constitution or trying to usurp the very thing they swore an oath to uphold and defend. It was all theater and going through the motions and “We the People” freely accepted it.
The American identity is in tatters and as some who has served in the uniform for over twenty-years it is not a wonder why recruiting numbers are at all time lows, why the service is in disarray and people are running to North Koreas as a haven. It is also not a wonder why Americans are leaving the United States and becoming citizens in other countries. America isn’t recognizable anymore so why not take up identity elsewhere that is more established and has a bit more pride in themselves despite the restrictive freedoms that were once enjoyed in America. At least they are not subjected to criminal penalty for using the wrong pronoun or refusing to acknowledge someone’s gender when they are clearly the opposite.
What good is a country when the laws are subjectively enforced, and favoritism is based on what is in between the brackets behind your name? What good is a country when 80% of the population doesn’t even know the proper governance we are under. Perhaps America should be a pure Democracy versus the Constitutional Federated (Representative) Republic that we are. Because people don’t know what entails because they didn’t bother to learn it – resulting in the mess we are in TODAY. While the RIGHT continues to try to salvage the remnants of this country, remember that we have enemies both domestic and foreign and they are working together. This isn’t an exaggeration or hyperbole; these are the facts. “America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we lose our freedoms, it will be because we have destroyed ourselves from within.” – Allegedly Abraham Lincoln.
America has already been destroyed from within. The outsiders are not even concerned or bothered with us at this point. American hegemony died the moment “Make America Great Again” became the most vilified sentence in history.
Staff Writer; Randy Purham
This brother is a Former US Congressional Candidate for the House of Representatives for the state of Alaska At-Large. He is the CEO of Purham & Associates, LLC and Host of Purham & Associates Show on TECNTV.com.
You failed to answer or speak to the declaration you posed with your title. Make America Great Again is naive statement in that is suggests that as a nation, the best was behind us as if to pull America out of this seeming death throw, we must run to the past. Which is humorous when, as a nation, we refused to truly address or learn from our past.
You then mentioned “subness”, African-American, Asian-American, etc. and and failed to explain why these terms exist. As non-Europeans, the stage was set that if you were not European, you could not be American, you were “them”. Even those who had lives for centuries in North America before the Europeans invaded were demoted to a subclass.
I want to hope that America is evolving. However, to be great, she must look to her future, not her past.
If Rome could fall, so can America. Perhaps past president A. Lincoln was illogically bragging in his quotes of him you have made in this article.The United States of America is unlike any other nation on earth.Our citizens are not working hard enough to identify,appreciate,and support the uniquenesses of a pluralistic representative government,and capitalist economics.We should revisit our understandings of America not as a dying nation but as a country which continues to create ways into navigating the problems of the future.