Change Exposes Cowards

     Poorly worded postings on Facebook are fodder for this blogger. One that caught my eye recently asked that "God Bless the Old America." So many things are wrong here. First, which God?  As there are roughly 5,000 gods worshiped in the world, this is very exclusionary. Let me just say, in an effort to give you a better understanding of my position, I believe in God; my own version of God. If I thought about it for any length of time, I'd say I'm a Deist. That being said, given the source of the post, I am guessing it's the Christian version of God. 
     In the post I saw, there was a U.S. flag in the background. Using my well-honed detective skills, I concluded that the America God was being asked to bless, was the United States of America and not one of the two continents once inhabited by indigenous people. Now that I understood which God and which America, I just had to decipher the meaning of "old." The U.S. is now as old as it has ever been. By the time you finish reading this, it will be even older. If the person who posted this wants to go back in time, he really wants God to bless the Young America. Now, that makes sense! After all, when a living entity (which is exactly what a country is) is young, she makes mistakes; lots of them. The young America did need some supernatural guidance as she was wrought with mistakes; read the Articles of Confederation or an early draft of the Constitution, or I don't know, think about slavery. As the U.S. has gotten older, through the acts of courageous men and women who fought and died (right here at home), this country has corrected her mistakes. Why then, does anyone want to go back to a former time when so many people were denied so much? The answer is, fear.
     This one innate entity has denied so many so much. People that wish for a Utopian past are afraid of the changes that threaten their power. A wish for an imaginary Utopian society, by the way, is a basic tenet of Fascism. If someone wants to go back to a former society, we must ask how far back we should go. Shall we go back to the 80's when people were dying of AIDS in droves and the Reagan administration ignored pleas for government funding for research? Perhaps a decade before when we had hostages in Iran, a secret war with Laos, bombings in Cambodia, and Watergate? Or the 60's so we can see the pictures from Kent State (1970) anew? Eisenhower's 50's brought the Interstate system and suburbia yet left the urban poor in neglected slums so white collar workers could have 2 cars and washing machines. The 40's provided us with the horrors of nuclear bombs and a World War. How bout the 30's when kids rode the rails so their parents had one less mouth to feed because a quarter of the nation was unemployed?
     Perhaps we should go back 86 years from today, October 29, 1929. The Great Crash. This occurred due to more than a decade of overproduction and speculation. Don't get me wrong, I'm all about time travel. I'd love to go back and see Bogie walking down the street in a trench coat and fedora. I'd love to sit in a Speakeasy and have a drink with an Irish cop. That all looks so fun...on a movie screen. Ever watch an old movie and see an African American as anything but a servant? 
     It is evident to me that the person who made this FB post wants to go back to an idealized, white-Christian America because that is what makes him feel safe. Safety is great but it doesn't let you go anywhere. The changes we are seeing in our society are exposing the cowards who proclaim to love this country. To love something is to nurture it and watch it grow into something of which one can be proud. Cast your fears aside and be amazed.