I Love America. She Drives Me Nuts.
On America's 250th birthday, a few thoughts on freedom, failure, barbecue, Florida, and why this gloriously unfinished experiment is still worth celebrating.
Happy 4th of July—and happy 250th birthday, America!
I’ve had the privilege of visiting every major U.S. city...
...except San Francisco.
Which, considering I’m a gay man, feels like admitting I’ve never been to Palm Springs because I have never been there either!
One of my favorite things about traveling this country is discovering that every state has its own personality. New York thinks it’s the center of the universe. Florida is basically America’s group project where nobody is supervising. Texas would like you to know it’s Texas. And every small town has at least one diner that serves pie capable of healing emotional wounds.
America is weird.
Beautiful.
Infuriating.
Generous.
Loud.
Contradictory.
We’ve done incredible things. We’ve also done things that should haunt us forever. Slavery. The treatment of Native peoples. Japanese internment. Plenty of wars we should have thought longer about. And yes... we’ve occasionally elected people who make you stare into the middle distance and whisper, “Well... that’s certainly an evil WTF choice.”
Some of y’all know exactly who I’m talking about. The rest of y’all think I’m talking about someone else. That’s kind of the point.
But here’s what keeps me hopeful.
This country has repeatedly reinvented itself. We’ve changed the world through science, medicine, technology, music, literature, entrepreneurship, aviation, space exploration, and enough cultural exports to convince half the planet they need blue jeans, barbecue and a pet dragon.
Freedom has never been something America perfected. It’s something we’ve argued about for 250 years.
Sometimes we’ve expanded it.
Sometimes we’ve restricted it.
Sometimes we’ve forgotten who it was supposed to belong to.
And somehow, despite all our spectacular ability to make a mess of things, we keep dragging the conversation forward. And for me…
That’s worth celebrating.
Not because America is flawless.
Because America is unfinished.
Happy 250th birthday to this loud, complicated, occasionally embarrassing, often inspiring experiment in democracy.
May we keep arguing, keep growing, keep laughing at ourselves, and keep becoming a country our great-grandchildren won’t have to apologize for.
Now somebody explain to me how I’ve managed to visit every major American city except San Francisco.
I really need to fix that. 🇺🇸
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