Beginnings of Our American Journeys, Etc. Part I

I was musing recently about how the United States got to where it is today. About the divisions we suffer, and the sins of our Founding Fathers and their fathers. How most of us are immigrants of some sort. And how the US of A came to be one of the
greatest countries in the history of the world. Yeah, warts and all.
About that immigrant thing. When you really think of it, even the Native Americans came from somewhere else. (Isn’t that term really just a euphemism to make people feel better about the Western European explorers mistakenly calling those living
here “Indians?”) Theories exist that they migrated for millennia from the Asian continent, coming south after crossing a land bridge from current Siberia connecting with North America.
So that makes them immigrants, as well. Talk about a journey. Is it possible that over time some even went into what is now
Central and South America as well? Highly likely. Following that logic, everyone everywhere is an immigrant, coming from Adam and Eve and heading to all corners of the globe (which statement makes no sense, since a globe is a sphere with no corners…
but I digress.) Or if you prefer not to get biblical, then at least consider the first civilizations originated in the region that is between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers,
and spread like fingers in a spread hand.
But back to the USA. Nobody can argue with the fact that there are some serious blemishes on our national soul. Slavery, genocide, taking land just because, industrial greed, legalized abortion and racism, an aberration in a nation founded on freedom, when people who were different were owned, oppressed, beaten, hung, deprived of their constitutional rights, and are still getting some of that awful treatment. I won’t even
go into the treatment of the Irish, Catholics, Mormons, Jews, Chinese, and so on, all as they simply strove to take part in the Dream.
So this is a given. The US was not, is not perfect. But in the course of human events, there are those who built a transcontinental railroad, a canal across Central America that revolutionized world commerce, saved the world from totalitarian governments not one but twice in the last century, and are always, always , the first knock at the door with humanitarian aid anywhere in the world in time of crisis. Yeah, that kind of mercy and generosity and well, love, just can’t be discounted out of hand.
These things can be debated, and should be. I’m just sayin’ that, given a choice of where I would want to live, it’s a no-brainer that it would be this land of the free and the home of the brave. And it ain’t just me, friends. Ask the guy swimming across the Rio Grande after walking across a desert, the whole families who gave up everything to be able to roll into New York harbor during the late-19th and early-20th Century and see that magnificent copper lady facing east to the ocean they just perilously crossed.
The multitudes who flee brutal dictatorships (and there are still a bunch of them out there) to just get their foot in Uncle Sam’s door.
But enough of this for today. The next installment brings what is our journey, where it is leading us as a people, and how I see it turning out. Till next time…

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