24 ms·

The Fourth of July

329 points by apsec112 6y ago

myrandomcomment 6y ago
As a father, a husband, a former soldier and an American, this brings a tear to my eye. “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.” - Lincoln As an American I feel we are bound not by our failures of past morality, but are need to fix the. I wish everyone understood this.
- ed25519FUUU 6y ago
  Seeing a statue of Lincoln defaced made me more sad than almost any of the other. If we can’t look to people like Lincoln as our heroes, then what type of hero do we really want?
  - skybrian 6y ago
    I'm not sure we should necessarily read all that much into what gets graffiti. There are trolls everywhere, and it can be cleaned up.
    - ihsw 6y ago
      Those trolls are running the Democratic party now.
  - radley 6y ago
    The defaced statue was a conservative media misunderstanding: We traced the photo back to the conservative website the Daily Wire, where “The Michael Knowles Show”... - https://www.factcheck.org/2020/06/statue-in-lincoln-memorial-was-not-defaced-by-protesters/ https://www.factcheck.org/2020/06/statue-in-lincoln-memorial...
    - nwienert 6y ago
      That specific one was, but there are others being called to take down, and this: https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-memorial-steps-vandalized/fact-check-lincoln-memorial-steps-vandalized-during-george-floyd-protests-idUSKBN23G25O https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-memorial-steps-...
    - cactus2093 6y ago
      How about the statue of Ulysses S Grant in San Francisco? Same level of absurdity as Lincoln. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/20/san-francisco-statues-ulysses-s-grant-junipero-serra-francis-scott-key https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/20/san-francisc...
      - epistasis 6y ago
        Grant also sent Custer to South Dakota to wage war and steal land. Once gold had been discovered it was a foregone conclusion that white settlers would therefore get the land, no matter what treaties had been signed. Which lead to a white supremacist eventually carving four presidents visages into Mount Rushmore, in violation of treaties made between the Lakota and the US, and today's arrest of Lakota who were protesting this theft. I doubt the people who tore down the statue of Grant knew any of this, any more than they know the rest of Grant's history. But it's pretty fucking hard for me to get upset about a statue like that being torn down. It's not like it's a one of a kind piece of art, it's just another monument of little significance or interest as an object, only as a symbol of our conquest and unjust killing. When the American revolutionaries tore down statues that were symbols of the the English empire, they were working towards a slightly more just and free society. Tearing down Grant's statues continues in this rich tradition. In a hundred years, it's likely that the majority of people that know about the early 2000s will look back at Obama's drone strikes that killed innocent families with similar dismay to what we (or is it just me?) see in Grant and his contemporaries. With running an imperialist nation, it's going to be awfully difficult to avoid doing some really awful things. That doesn't make the evils they perform in our name acceptable.
        6y ago
  - zeckalpha 6y ago
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dakota_War_of_1862#Execution https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dakota_War_of_1862#Execution
- baybal2 6y ago
  Americans! People cannot "transcend" past wrongs, so don't do them. The ones correcting historical wrongs, and undoing mess ups of previous generations don't do that for the "good" memory of people who did them.
  - revnode 6y ago
    > People cannot "transcend" past wrongs, so don't do them. Semantics? I don't care what word you use, but you can absolutely always do better and the beautiful thing about America's founding is that in every respect, it is aspirational and we have aspired to do better. And we have. And we can do better still.
- weiming 6y ago
  What me and my family talked about today is that, as immigrants, we are so sad how much the "native born" people of the US hate their own country. They seem to never waste an opportunity to remind others of their disdain and it is more and more visible these days e.g. in big news media or on Twitter. Makes me sad and I hope this can change.
  - refurb 6y ago
    As an immigrant the US I feel the exact same way. American don't know how good they have it compared to a lot of the world.
  - bradhoffman 6y ago
    Me too.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - bJGVygG7MQVF8c 6y ago
    Indeed. Colin Kaepernick, on Twitter: > "Black ppl have been dehumanized, brutalized, criminalized + terrorized by America for centuries, & are expected to join your commemoration of “independence”, while you enslaved our ancestors. We reject your celebration of white supremacy & look forward to liberation for all. " Point of clarification: by "our ancestors" he's referring exclusively to his African-descended ancestors, not his European-descended ones.
    - acdha 6y ago
      You’re upset that he focused on the ones who were oppressed rather than the ones who were oppressing? Many Black people have white ancestors but ask how much of that was really consensual and how those children were treated.
      - throwvid19 6y ago
        Are you suggesting that Colin Kaepernick's mother was raped?
- myrandomcomment 6y ago
  Sorry for bad typing. ...but our need to fix them.
- hintymad 6y ago
  The main stream media and the elites are supporting the cancel culture. In fact, they fuel it -- both WaPo and NYT published articles about why 7/4 should be canceled. That's okay, as a country needs different voice and people have different political spectrum by nature. What's disappointing, though, is that the conservatives do not have a big enough platform to publish well-argued counter points, even though "conservatives" today is really moderate, even moderate left per the standard 10 years ago. We don't have a problem of being far-left. We have a problem of imbalanced influence.
  - ciarannolan 6y ago
    Please consider that you are in an extreme social media and/or real life filter bubble. "The elites" aren't some secret Soros/Clinton/HerEmails force out to destroy America. I've found that taking a long-ish break (2-3 weeks) from reading the news and social media can be extremely eye opening.
    - xkcd-sucks 6y ago
      True, but on the other hand the components of this filter bubble are mostly people that have benifited from the current state of affairs
      - ciarannolan 6y ago
        What do you mean?
  - hef19898 6y ago
    Ever heard of Fox News and OAN?
    - hintymad 6y ago
      Even the moderate automatically label them as far right, and tune them out. I was expecting a platform that can reach out to people with different political views. You know how federalists and anti-federalists debated? Some of them probably hated the opposite group, but they nonetheless share the same platforms to debate.
tyingq 6y ago
Sounds like the ceremony would have been roughly a year after the first gulf war in 1991. Which also included a fair number of non-citizen US combatants. I met a lot of them during my 8 year service. It's not clear to me what advantage that path offers, but I can say there are a lot of people that try it, specifically because they think it's an accelerated path to citizenship.
- brians 6y ago
  It was the only path for my family—illegal immigrants in the inter-war years who served in WW2 for citizenship. The US kept its promise to Europeans, even those not then considered white—but broke its promise to Filipinos. We have a lot of growing to do.
  - tyingq 6y ago
    That's very interesting to me. Do you think the statistics would show that? That whitish, for example, Eastern European recruits, would have had better luck than more brown folks?
  - barry-cotter 6y ago
    > The US kept its promise to Europeans, even those not then considered white No Europeans were ever not considered white under US law. Blacks, Native Americans and Asians have all been othered racially under US law. All Europeans have always been considered white. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_whiteness_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_whiteness_in_th...
    - IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago
      The article isn’t quite as clear on that. Jews were classified as non-white at least for a while and in the census. Italians also faced discrimination, although not by law. Then, obviously, there are British citizens ich Indian roots, and Belgians born in Kongo. Not sure how they fit into this debate.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
tingletech 6y ago
Up until March, my office was less than a block from the Paramount theater in downtown Oakland. Once a month there would be a huge naturalization ceremony there as I was walking in to the office. That always did make me feel proud to be "an American", seeing all the newly naturalized people and their families crowding the area.
- augustflanagan 6y ago
  Two years ago my wife became a citizen, and my son and I got to go watch her take the oath of citizenship in the Paramount with around 1000 other people from almost 90 countries. I have never felt so proud to be American.
- toby 6y ago
  That's where I was naturalized! I had mixed feelings about being required to go to a ceremony even though all my paperwork was done, but in the end it was really special. On the way home I went to the Betabrand factory (which was on Cesar Chavez), told them that I had just gotten naturalized and that I wanted to buy some of their Stars and Stripes pants. They thought it was so cute that they created a special discount code for people who have just become citizens. Another fun thing was walking through the mission, which has a lot of immigrants, people would see the envelope I was holding and yell "congratulations" or even high-five me. That night my friends took me to a baseball game. It was overall a lovely induction.
  - endgame 6y ago
    Some things are too important to be mere paperwork, and need a ritual to mark them. Graduating university is where this range begins, and taking on the citizenship of another nation is definitely way above that.
    - toby 6y ago
      Having done it I completely agree with you. There were a lot of frustrating hurdles over many years, but this was so much more than that and I'm really happy for the final ritual.
ashton314 6y ago
Thanks for posting this. It’s a tumultuous time, and I needed a reminder it is possible for us as a nation to recover from the mistakes.
mahaganapati 6y ago
Unfortunately still we have Guam, Puerto Rico and others that have given so much but remain as not quite citizens
- blahbhthrow3748 6y ago
  And the residents of DC who despite being citizens are denied representation
  - protomyth 6y ago
    It was a huge mistake to allow people to live inside DC in the first place. The National Capital that is part of no state shouldn't have anyone actually be a resident.
    - kibwen 6y ago
      That particular mistake is too late to rectify now, unless someone is proposing to relocate 700,000 people. Hell, even just letting them vote as unofficial residents of the nearest state would solve the problem; Maryland can have those votes for federal office without having D.C. yield any of its own authority to enforce its borders.
      - dnautics 6y ago
        Not really. Arlington VA was retroceded, no reason the rest (aside from actual federal buildings and facilities) couldn't be.
        gengkev 6y ago
        I imagine it's possible, but "no reason" is definitely a stretch. The parts of DC that are federal land are hardly contiguous, and trying to force a clean split between DC and Maryland looks like it would be a nightmare: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/local/dc-marijuana-map/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/local/dc-marijuana-m...
YarickR2 6y ago
Tearjerker, but in a positive way. I believe so much in this country and it's ability to right what's wrong, eventually.
- nxc18 6y ago
  Absolutely. I loved this article because it captured so much of what America is about and should be about. I hope we find it in ourselves to right our wrongs and stop the wrongs actively being committed against Americans and aspiring Americans. We’re so far from living up to our ideals, but it is hopeful to remember that we can make progress and have made progress in the past.
jessaustin 6y ago
A bit sentimental, but on holidays we can accept that. The bigger problem with this historical account is that it is incomplete. We Americans like to pretend that this story begins with WWII, when the evil Empire of Japan invaded those bucolic isles of the Philippines, whose brave residents were inspired by MacArthur to rise up against colonialism. In reality, this history began in 1898. Americans pretended to ally with the Filipinos against the Spanish, when in reality they only wanted to replace the Spanish as colonial overlords. In the ensuing conflicts and decades of exploitation, hundreds of thousands died. There was no reason for any of this. America at the turn of the century had no interests in the western Pacific Ocean. American intelligentsia agreed with Mark Twain that the barbarity shamed all of us. Sure, some American sugar companies made some money, and the particular Filipinos favored by American imperialists made some money. I feel an awful precedent was set. Previously our worst barbarities had been limited to the South and the Frontier. At a stroke, they were unleashed on the World. (Seen any news stories about Libya recently?) The event described in TFA seems a small consolation.
- magicsmoke 6y ago
  The interesting thing is that despite what America did to these Filipino soldiers, they still chose to be American and sacrificed the majority of their life to do so. American immigration really is the ultimate test of loyalty. Makes you wonder how many natural-born Americans would still choose to be American if they had to go through the immigration experience first. Now that's an idea. People aren't born American citizens but as probationary citizens, and they only become full citizens after fulfilling a series of trials. Imagine what kind of society would emerge from the other end.
  - plasticchris 6y ago
    This is part of the premise for starship troopers (heinlein)
    - logical_proof 6y ago
      I always reflect on this right here when the subject comes up. I first read Starship Troopers as a high schooler in 1999. It impacted me greatly and I took what I wanted to from the book thinking it made me wiser. Upon reflection now 20 years later I think the book is a strong warning against incentivizing civic duty. A strong sense of civic duty and a respect for law must be value enough without reward for a democracy to remain healthy. I am open to the notion that 20 years from now I will think that 2020 me was equally foolish to 1999 me.
hirundo 6y ago
There seems to be more hatred for this country, from within, than ever before in my life. This has been trending all day: https://twitter.com/search?q=%23FvckTheForth&src=trend_click https://twitter.com/search?q=%23FvckTheForth&src=trend_click Yet I still love it more than not. That seems to make me an "other" to so many of these people.
- mmm_grayons 6y ago
  22% of Americans use twitter. Most tweets are from 10% of those people. There are many people who yell and scream so loudly on-line that people believe their numbers to be much greater than they are. It frustrates me when someone takes action because "people on twitter are mad". Decisions are being made based on who has the most active thumbs. Source: https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2019/04/24/sizing-up-twitter-users/ https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2019/04/24/sizing-up-tw...
  - chance_state 6y ago
    So only 72,600,000 Americans use Twitter? And that's your argument that it's insignificant?
    - cywick 6y ago
      No, the argument is 78% of Americans don't use Twitter at all, 20% have Twitter accounts but are not very active, and only 2% are responsible for the vast majority of tweets. In other words, what you see on Twitter, especially when it comes to somewhat more extreme messages, is not representative at all for the US population as a whole.
      - slim 6y ago
        how many people vote in elections ? just to compare the representativeness of the samples
        mmm_grayons 6y ago
c3534l 6y ago
Given this introduction: > I've re-posted this many times, because it's fundamental to what it means to me to be an American. I was thinking I was in for something uplifting. Instead I got: > In 1946, Congress reneged on FDR's promise. Filipino solders who fought for us and their families were not given their promised citizenship, let alone benefits. ... They waited 44 years, until after most of them were dead. This story is horrible. We betrayed our WWII allies, betrayed people who were rightfully American citizens, in all likelihood just because they were the wrong race. Everyone in this thread is acting like this story is inspiring. I feel like everyone has gone crazy that they think this is supposed to make me feel patriotic. This is an example of America at its ugliest and most prejudiced.
- deeg 6y ago
  You aren't wrong. There were probably some veterans who were too bitter to accept the late grant of citizenship. The government finally made the step forward--apallingly late--but it's still a step forward. Let's make sure we keep taking those steps.
- verroq 6y ago
  America eventually doing the right thing is America at its worst? Why so much self-hatred?
- refurb 6y ago
  If your standard for a country is perfection, you're going to be sorely disappointed, again and again. And in fact, I can guarantee you that you hold opinions today that will be looked up with disgust by people in 100 years.
- rayiner 6y ago
  This story isn’t about Truman and the other people who reneged on the promise in 1946–who were all dead by 1992. That’s a very self-centered way to look at this. This is a story about immigrants who loved America so much that they proudly accepted citizenship when it was belatedly conferred to them. What kind of country engenders such love and devotion even in the face of such slights?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
adamsea 6y ago
tl;dr “America good, me not want think about complicated stuff.”
- chance_state 6y ago
  Phewf, I was worried we might go a whole thread without mentioning how bad America was. Thanks!
- IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago
  This isn’t remotely accurate as a summary. Read some of te‘s other writing and you’ll see he criticizes the US rather harshly, and isn’t afraid of any complexity.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
FriendlyNormie 6y ago
You are one retarded faggot. Holy FUCK.
flipactual 6y ago
This is a horrific example of perseverance porn These people were exploited which is terrible. That the nation that exploited them was still more desirable to them than their former home is also terrible. That all they got in return for being exploited was what they were initially promised but decades later is terrible Everything presented here is terrible
- Godel_unicode 6y ago
  "Everything" is a bit uncharitable. There are people in that story who, when they found out about a historic wrong, did something about it. That's not terrible. There are people who are inspired by that act of doing the right thing, and have gone on to be partisans for righting similar wrongs. That's not terrible. That it happened is terrible. Ignoring the good that was done so that we can wallow in the bad is also terrible. More than one thing can be true.
  - spiderfarmer 6y ago
    The ratio of good vs. bad is what is terrible. The USA is severely lacking empathy.
    - acqq 6y ago
      The sentence from the article that got me the most: "Their promised benefits were not even brought to a vote until 2008, when most of the happy men I saw that day were dead." 55 years after the "promise." The title of the article has the same tension with its content as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Born_in_the_U.S.A._(song)#Themes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Born_in_the_U.S.A._(song)#Them... There's also a certain similarity to the reflex reactions to the title overwhelming the perception of the subject of the work.
    - Godel_unicode 6y ago
      The comment to which I am replying is a great example of that. When the bad outweighs the good, it becomes particularly important to make note of the good when it happens. It's easy to just roll over and say everything is terrible. That's what happened to the people in this story; nobody was willing to try and do the right thing. Then, someone did. It's important to acknowledge the evil, but it's also important to hold up the good and say "Do this. You can make a difference." Don't roll over and accept the evil as inevitable. It's not.
ketzu 6y ago
This reminds me of stories over the last years(?) of afghan/iraqi translators that worked for the US under the promise of citizenship that got massively delayed at least (with immense risk to their lifes). In general, the final granting of citizienship in this story seems mostly symbolic, similar to the exoneration of Alan Turing, just that at least some of the ill treated are still alive. It's good it happened and it should be encouraged to make amends for past wrongdoings. But it needs to be accompanied with a change in attitude. Otherwise, it's a hollow gesture, like a child saying sorry after hitting someone, because it learned there won't be consequences like that. I think that's where peoples onlook on this differ. Is it a symbol of a nation going forward, internalizing the values it claims to build upon - or a mostly meaningless gesture in a system that hasn't really changed and would do it all over again. Personally (as an outsider perspectice), I feel the US is changing, but the forces are pulling in many directions and it's slow. The current US seems to pay lip service only to human rights but embraces it for propaganda, I hope it works someday and the citiziens will hold its own country accountable to that.
- zenpaul 6y ago
  Yes, This American Life did a great story on this. "We’ve fought two wars since 9/11. We got help from tens of thousands of Iraqis and Afghans—some were targeted or killed because they helped us. We owe these people. We’ve passed laws that say so. So why has it been so hard for us to get many of them to safety?" https://www.thisamericanlife.org/607/didnt-we-solve-this-one https://www.thisamericanlife.org/607/didnt-we-solve-this-one
redis_mlc 6y ago
The article is written in a dramatic fashion, but lacks historical context. The Philippines was liberated early from the Japanese at the request of Douglas MacArthur. It was not a top military priority, and the planners wanted to skip it, but President Roosevelt authorized the invasion as a symbolic and political goal. So millions of Filipinos got their freedom from the US. Yes, it was wrong to delay citizenship for a few thousand Filipinos who fought, but in the overall scheme, not that significant. Until today, many Filipinos want US statehood. And a lot of other Pacific island nations got their freedom back from the USA, most notably Indonesia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_MacArthur https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_MacArthur
specialist 6y ago
Nice story. I've been trying to articulate a reason for hope during these chaotic times. Forgive me: About American Exceptionalism As a proud citizen of the USA, I do think America is Exceptional. Our struggle between reactionaries and progressives is done in public, embarrassingly, in full view. This struggle is done in the large, in the small, in every corner. It never stops. So, yes, please, criticize America. We've done so much wrong. But also praise. Because we're also doing good, thru fits and starts, and many are trying to do better.
cafard 6y ago
Great piece.

329 points by apsec112 6y ago

As a father, a husband, a former soldier and an American, this brings a tear to my eye. “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.” - Lincoln As an American I feel we are bound not by our failures of past morality, but are need to fix the. I wish everyone understood this.

ed25519FUUU 6y ago
Seeing a statue of Lincoln defaced made me more sad than almost any of the other. If we can’t look to people like Lincoln as our heroes, then what type of hero do we really want?
- skybrian 6y ago
  I'm not sure we should necessarily read all that much into what gets graffiti. There are trolls everywhere, and it can be cleaned up.
  - ihsw 6y ago
    Those trolls are running the Democratic party now.
- radley 6y ago
  The defaced statue was a conservative media misunderstanding: We traced the photo back to the conservative website the Daily Wire, where “The Michael Knowles Show”... - https://www.factcheck.org/2020/06/statue-in-lincoln-memorial-was-not-defaced-by-protesters/ https://www.factcheck.org/2020/06/statue-in-lincoln-memorial...
  - nwienert 6y ago
    That specific one was, but there are others being called to take down, and this: https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-memorial-steps-vandalized/fact-check-lincoln-memorial-steps-vandalized-during-george-floyd-protests-idUSKBN23G25O https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-memorial-steps-...
  - cactus2093 6y ago
    How about the statue of Ulysses S Grant in San Francisco? Same level of absurdity as Lincoln. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/20/san-francisco-statues-ulysses-s-grant-junipero-serra-francis-scott-key https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/20/san-francisc...
    - epistasis 6y ago
      Grant also sent Custer to South Dakota to wage war and steal land. Once gold had been discovered it was a foregone conclusion that white settlers would therefore get the land, no matter what treaties had been signed. Which lead to a white supremacist eventually carving four presidents visages into Mount Rushmore, in violation of treaties made between the Lakota and the US, and today's arrest of Lakota who were protesting this theft. I doubt the people who tore down the statue of Grant knew any of this, any more than they know the rest of Grant's history. But it's pretty fucking hard for me to get upset about a statue like that being torn down. It's not like it's a one of a kind piece of art, it's just another monument of little significance or interest as an object, only as a symbol of our conquest and unjust killing. When the American revolutionaries tore down statues that were symbols of the the English empire, they were working towards a slightly more just and free society. Tearing down Grant's statues continues in this rich tradition. In a hundred years, it's likely that the majority of people that know about the early 2000s will look back at Obama's drone strikes that killed innocent families with similar dismay to what we (or is it just me?) see in Grant and his contemporaries. With running an imperialist nation, it's going to be awfully difficult to avoid doing some really awful things. That doesn't make the evils they perform in our name acceptable.
      - 6y ago
- zeckalpha 6y ago
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dakota_War_of_1862#Execution https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dakota_War_of_1862#Execution
baybal2 6y ago
Americans! People cannot "transcend" past wrongs, so don't do them. The ones correcting historical wrongs, and undoing mess ups of previous generations don't do that for the "good" memory of people who did them.
- revnode 6y ago
  > People cannot "transcend" past wrongs, so don't do them. Semantics? I don't care what word you use, but you can absolutely always do better and the beautiful thing about America's founding is that in every respect, it is aspirational and we have aspired to do better. And we have. And we can do better still.
weiming 6y ago
What me and my family talked about today is that, as immigrants, we are so sad how much the "native born" people of the US hate their own country. They seem to never waste an opportunity to remind others of their disdain and it is more and more visible these days e.g. in big news media or on Twitter. Makes me sad and I hope this can change.
- refurb 6y ago
  As an immigrant the US I feel the exact same way. American don't know how good they have it compared to a lot of the world.
- bradhoffman 6y ago
  Me too.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- bJGVygG7MQVF8c 6y ago
  Indeed. Colin Kaepernick, on Twitter: > "Black ppl have been dehumanized, brutalized, criminalized + terrorized by America for centuries, & are expected to join your commemoration of “independence”, while you enslaved our ancestors. We reject your celebration of white supremacy & look forward to liberation for all. " Point of clarification: by "our ancestors" he's referring exclusively to his African-descended ancestors, not his European-descended ones.
  - acdha 6y ago
    You’re upset that he focused on the ones who were oppressed rather than the ones who were oppressing? Many Black people have white ancestors but ask how much of that was really consensual and how those children were treated.
    - throwvid19 6y ago
      Are you suggesting that Colin Kaepernick's mother was raped?
myrandomcomment 6y ago
Sorry for bad typing. ...but our need to fix them.
hintymad 6y ago
The main stream media and the elites are supporting the cancel culture. In fact, they fuel it -- both WaPo and NYT published articles about why 7/4 should be canceled. That's okay, as a country needs different voice and people have different political spectrum by nature. What's disappointing, though, is that the conservatives do not have a big enough platform to publish well-argued counter points, even though "conservatives" today is really moderate, even moderate left per the standard 10 years ago. We don't have a problem of being far-left. We have a problem of imbalanced influence.
- ciarannolan 6y ago
  Please consider that you are in an extreme social media and/or real life filter bubble. "The elites" aren't some secret Soros/Clinton/HerEmails force out to destroy America. I've found that taking a long-ish break (2-3 weeks) from reading the news and social media can be extremely eye opening.
  - xkcd-sucks 6y ago
    True, but on the other hand the components of this filter bubble are mostly people that have benifited from the current state of affairs
    - ciarannolan 6y ago
      What do you mean?
- hef19898 6y ago
  Ever heard of Fox News and OAN?
  - hintymad 6y ago
    Even the moderate automatically label them as far right, and tune them out. I was expecting a platform that can reach out to people with different political views. You know how federalists and anti-federalists debated? Some of them probably hated the opposite group, but they nonetheless share the same platforms to debate.

tyingq 6y ago

Sounds like the ceremony would have been roughly a year after the first gulf war in 1991. Which also included a fair number of non-citizen US combatants. I met a lot of them during my 8 year service. It's not clear to me what advantage that path offers, but I can say there are a lot of people that try it, specifically because they think it's an accelerated path to citizenship.

brians 6y ago
It was the only path for my family—illegal immigrants in the inter-war years who served in WW2 for citizenship. The US kept its promise to Europeans, even those not then considered white—but broke its promise to Filipinos. We have a lot of growing to do.
- tyingq 6y ago
  That's very interesting to me. Do you think the statistics would show that? That whitish, for example, Eastern European recruits, would have had better luck than more brown folks?
- barry-cotter 6y ago
  > The US kept its promise to Europeans, even those not then considered white No Europeans were ever not considered white under US law. Blacks, Native Americans and Asians have all been othered racially under US law. All Europeans have always been considered white. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_whiteness_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_whiteness_in_th...
  - IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago
    The article isn’t quite as clear on that. Jews were classified as non-white at least for a while and in the census. Italians also faced discrimination, although not by law. Then, obviously, there are British citizens ich Indian roots, and Belgians born in Kongo. Not sure how they fit into this debate.

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tingletech 6y ago

Up until March, my office was less than a block from the Paramount theater in downtown Oakland. Once a month there would be a huge naturalization ceremony there as I was walking in to the office. That always did make me feel proud to be "an American", seeing all the newly naturalized people and their families crowding the area.

augustflanagan 6y ago
Two years ago my wife became a citizen, and my son and I got to go watch her take the oath of citizenship in the Paramount with around 1000 other people from almost 90 countries. I have never felt so proud to be American.
toby 6y ago
That's where I was naturalized! I had mixed feelings about being required to go to a ceremony even though all my paperwork was done, but in the end it was really special. On the way home I went to the Betabrand factory (which was on Cesar Chavez), told them that I had just gotten naturalized and that I wanted to buy some of their Stars and Stripes pants. They thought it was so cute that they created a special discount code for people who have just become citizens. Another fun thing was walking through the mission, which has a lot of immigrants, people would see the envelope I was holding and yell "congratulations" or even high-five me. That night my friends took me to a baseball game. It was overall a lovely induction.
- endgame 6y ago
  Some things are too important to be mere paperwork, and need a ritual to mark them. Graduating university is where this range begins, and taking on the citizenship of another nation is definitely way above that.
  - toby 6y ago
    Having done it I completely agree with you. There were a lot of frustrating hurdles over many years, but this was so much more than that and I'm really happy for the final ritual.

ashton314 6y ago

Thanks for posting this. It’s a tumultuous time, and I needed a reminder it is possible for us as a nation to recover from the mistakes.

mahaganapati 6y ago

Unfortunately still we have Guam, Puerto Rico and others that have given so much but remain as not quite citizens

blahbhthrow3748 6y ago
And the residents of DC who despite being citizens are denied representation
- protomyth 6y ago
  It was a huge mistake to allow people to live inside DC in the first place. The National Capital that is part of no state shouldn't have anyone actually be a resident.
  - kibwen 6y ago
    That particular mistake is too late to rectify now, unless someone is proposing to relocate 700,000 people. Hell, even just letting them vote as unofficial residents of the nearest state would solve the problem; Maryland can have those votes for federal office without having D.C. yield any of its own authority to enforce its borders.
    - dnautics 6y ago
      Not really. Arlington VA was retroceded, no reason the rest (aside from actual federal buildings and facilities) couldn't be.
      - gengkev 6y ago
        I imagine it's possible, but "no reason" is definitely a stretch. The parts of DC that are federal land are hardly contiguous, and trying to force a clean split between DC and Maryland looks like it would be a nightmare: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/local/dc-marijuana-map/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/local/dc-marijuana-m...

YarickR2 6y ago

Tearjerker, but in a positive way. I believe so much in this country and it's ability to right what's wrong, eventually.

nxc18 6y ago
Absolutely. I loved this article because it captured so much of what America is about and should be about. I hope we find it in ourselves to right our wrongs and stop the wrongs actively being committed against Americans and aspiring Americans. We’re so far from living up to our ideals, but it is hopeful to remember that we can make progress and have made progress in the past.

jessaustin 6y ago

A bit sentimental, but on holidays we can accept that. The bigger problem with this historical account is that it is incomplete. We Americans like to pretend that this story begins with WWII, when the evil Empire of Japan invaded those bucolic isles of the Philippines, whose brave residents were inspired by MacArthur to rise up against colonialism. In reality, this history began in 1898. Americans pretended to ally with the Filipinos against the Spanish, when in reality they only wanted to replace the Spanish as colonial overlords. In the ensuing conflicts and decades of exploitation, hundreds of thousands died. There was no reason for any of this. America at the turn of the century had no interests in the western Pacific Ocean. American intelligentsia agreed with Mark Twain that the barbarity shamed all of us. Sure, some American sugar companies made some money, and the particular Filipinos favored by American imperialists made some money. I feel an awful precedent was set. Previously our worst barbarities had been limited to the South and the Frontier. At a stroke, they were unleashed on the World. (Seen any news stories about Libya recently?) The event described in TFA seems a small consolation.

magicsmoke 6y ago
The interesting thing is that despite what America did to these Filipino soldiers, they still chose to be American and sacrificed the majority of their life to do so. American immigration really is the ultimate test of loyalty. Makes you wonder how many natural-born Americans would still choose to be American if they had to go through the immigration experience first. Now that's an idea. People aren't born American citizens but as probationary citizens, and they only become full citizens after fulfilling a series of trials. Imagine what kind of society would emerge from the other end.
- plasticchris 6y ago
  This is part of the premise for starship troopers (heinlein)
  - logical_proof 6y ago
    I always reflect on this right here when the subject comes up. I first read Starship Troopers as a high schooler in 1999. It impacted me greatly and I took what I wanted to from the book thinking it made me wiser. Upon reflection now 20 years later I think the book is a strong warning against incentivizing civic duty. A strong sense of civic duty and a respect for law must be value enough without reward for a democracy to remain healthy. I am open to the notion that 20 years from now I will think that 2020 me was equally foolish to 1999 me.

hirundo 6y ago

There seems to be more hatred for this country, from within, than ever before in my life. This has been trending all day: https://twitter.com/search?q=%23FvckTheForth&src=trend_click https://twitter.com/search?q=%23FvckTheForth&src=trend_click Yet I still love it more than not. That seems to make me an "other" to so many of these people.

mmm_grayons 6y ago
22% of Americans use twitter. Most tweets are from 10% of those people. There are many people who yell and scream so loudly on-line that people believe their numbers to be much greater than they are. It frustrates me when someone takes action because "people on twitter are mad". Decisions are being made based on who has the most active thumbs. Source: https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2019/04/24/sizing-up-twitter-users/ https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2019/04/24/sizing-up-tw...
- chance_state 6y ago
  So only 72,600,000 Americans use Twitter? And that's your argument that it's insignificant?
  - cywick 6y ago
    No, the argument is 78% of Americans don't use Twitter at all, 20% have Twitter accounts but are not very active, and only 2% are responsible for the vast majority of tweets. In other words, what you see on Twitter, especially when it comes to somewhat more extreme messages, is not representative at all for the US population as a whole.
    - slim 6y ago
      how many people vote in elections ? just to compare the representativeness of the samples
      - mmm_grayons 6y ago

c3534l 6y ago

Given this introduction: > I've re-posted this many times, because it's fundamental to what it means to me to be an American. I was thinking I was in for something uplifting. Instead I got: > In 1946, Congress reneged on FDR's promise. Filipino solders who fought for us and their families were not given their promised citizenship, let alone benefits. ... They waited 44 years, until after most of them were dead. This story is horrible. We betrayed our WWII allies, betrayed people who were rightfully American citizens, in all likelihood just because they were the wrong race. Everyone in this thread is acting like this story is inspiring. I feel like everyone has gone crazy that they think this is supposed to make me feel patriotic. This is an example of America at its ugliest and most prejudiced.

deeg 6y ago
You aren't wrong. There were probably some veterans who were too bitter to accept the late grant of citizenship. The government finally made the step forward--apallingly late--but it's still a step forward. Let's make sure we keep taking those steps.
verroq 6y ago
America eventually doing the right thing is America at its worst? Why so much self-hatred?
refurb 6y ago
If your standard for a country is perfection, you're going to be sorely disappointed, again and again. And in fact, I can guarantee you that you hold opinions today that will be looked up with disgust by people in 100 years.
rayiner 6y ago
This story isn’t about Truman and the other people who reneged on the promise in 1946–who were all dead by 1992. That’s a very self-centered way to look at this. This is a story about immigrants who loved America so much that they proudly accepted citizenship when it was belatedly conferred to them. What kind of country engenders such love and devotion even in the face of such slights?

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adamsea 6y ago

tl;dr “America good, me not want think about complicated stuff.”

chance_state 6y ago
Phewf, I was worried we might go a whole thread without mentioning how bad America was. Thanks!
IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago
This isn’t remotely accurate as a summary. Read some of te‘s other writing and you’ll see he criticizes the US rather harshly, and isn’t afraid of any complexity.

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FriendlyNormie 6y ago

You are one retarded faggot. Holy FUCK.

flipactual 6y ago

This is a horrific example of perseverance porn These people were exploited which is terrible. That the nation that exploited them was still more desirable to them than their former home is also terrible. That all they got in return for being exploited was what they were initially promised but decades later is terrible Everything presented here is terrible

Godel_unicode 6y ago
"Everything" is a bit uncharitable. There are people in that story who, when they found out about a historic wrong, did something about it. That's not terrible. There are people who are inspired by that act of doing the right thing, and have gone on to be partisans for righting similar wrongs. That's not terrible. That it happened is terrible. Ignoring the good that was done so that we can wallow in the bad is also terrible. More than one thing can be true.
- spiderfarmer 6y ago
  The ratio of good vs. bad is what is terrible. The USA is severely lacking empathy.
  - acqq 6y ago
    The sentence from the article that got me the most: "Their promised benefits were not even brought to a vote until 2008, when most of the happy men I saw that day were dead." 55 years after the "promise." The title of the article has the same tension with its content as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Born_in_the_U.S.A._(song)#Themes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Born_in_the_U.S.A._(song)#Them... There's also a certain similarity to the reflex reactions to the title overwhelming the perception of the subject of the work.
  - Godel_unicode 6y ago
    The comment to which I am replying is a great example of that. When the bad outweighs the good, it becomes particularly important to make note of the good when it happens. It's easy to just roll over and say everything is terrible. That's what happened to the people in this story; nobody was willing to try and do the right thing. Then, someone did. It's important to acknowledge the evil, but it's also important to hold up the good and say "Do this. You can make a difference." Don't roll over and accept the evil as inevitable. It's not.

ketzu 6y ago

This reminds me of stories over the last years(?) of afghan/iraqi translators that worked for the US under the promise of citizenship that got massively delayed at least (with immense risk to their lifes). In general, the final granting of citizienship in this story seems mostly symbolic, similar to the exoneration of Alan Turing, just that at least some of the ill treated are still alive. It's good it happened and it should be encouraged to make amends for past wrongdoings. But it needs to be accompanied with a change in attitude. Otherwise, it's a hollow gesture, like a child saying sorry after hitting someone, because it learned there won't be consequences like that. I think that's where peoples onlook on this differ. Is it a symbol of a nation going forward, internalizing the values it claims to build upon - or a mostly meaningless gesture in a system that hasn't really changed and would do it all over again. Personally (as an outsider perspectice), I feel the US is changing, but the forces are pulling in many directions and it's slow. The current US seems to pay lip service only to human rights but embraces it for propaganda, I hope it works someday and the citiziens will hold its own country accountable to that.

zenpaul 6y ago
Yes, This American Life did a great story on this. "We’ve fought two wars since 9/11. We got help from tens of thousands of Iraqis and Afghans—some were targeted or killed because they helped us. We owe these people. We’ve passed laws that say so. So why has it been so hard for us to get many of them to safety?" https://www.thisamericanlife.org/607/didnt-we-solve-this-one https://www.thisamericanlife.org/607/didnt-we-solve-this-one

redis_mlc 6y ago

The article is written in a dramatic fashion, but lacks historical context. The Philippines was liberated early from the Japanese at the request of Douglas MacArthur. It was not a top military priority, and the planners wanted to skip it, but President Roosevelt authorized the invasion as a symbolic and political goal. So millions of Filipinos got their freedom from the US. Yes, it was wrong to delay citizenship for a few thousand Filipinos who fought, but in the overall scheme, not that significant. Until today, many Filipinos want US statehood. And a lot of other Pacific island nations got their freedom back from the USA, most notably Indonesia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_MacArthur https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_MacArthur

specialist 6y ago

Nice story. I've been trying to articulate a reason for hope during these chaotic times. Forgive me: About American Exceptionalism As a proud citizen of the USA, I do think America is Exceptional. Our struggle between reactionaries and progressives is done in public, embarrassingly, in full view. This struggle is done in the large, in the small, in every corner. It never stops. So, yes, please, criticize America. We've done so much wrong. But also praise. Because we're also doing good, thru fits and starts, and many are trying to do better.

cafard 6y ago

Great piece.