Happy Birthday, Dear Country

The past several years, during the administration of Dishonest Donald, I posted an annual birthday and get-well-soon message to my country, concluding with the sentence, “Happy Birthday, many happy returns, and may better birthdays come. May you come to reject the yahoos, give ear to the wise, and address your real problems.”

I am pleased to observe that this has partly, although only partly, come to pass. The fascists lost the election, although more than seventy million Americans voted to re-elect Trump; however imperfect the wisdom of President Biden and his advisors, our new president is not an ignorant moron and complete fraud to the marrow of his bones, nor is his administration staffed with grifters and alt-right fascists.

Real problems are being addressed to some extent, but only to some extent. The current administration is not indifferent to the threat of the Earth being made uninhabitable, even if its environmental policies are open to criticism; Mr. Biden is not a Russian asset, nor blind to the need for international cooperation on some issues. Unfortunately, President Biden thinks that he will do the country good by “going big” on government spending and borrowing, doing special favors for labor unions and crony capitalists, and ignoring the threats posed by the spiraling national debt. We stand in need of statesmen with a different agenda for addressing our real problems.

That said, a reading of history shows that human societies, including the United States of America, have almost always been lurching from one crisis to another, and in most cases have been able to recover themselves somehow, although not without ugly messes and real human suffering. Things could be better and could be worse; one may at least hope that with an odious demagogue out of office, the sane and decent elements of the Left and Right will not do too badly at dealing with the country’s moral, international, ecological, financial, and other challenges.

Day’s Activities

My sister, niece, and I went to Longwood Gardens this afternoon. We passed through some lovely countryside on the way there and back: forested hills, farmland, old stone houses, and so forth. My teenage niece, though, wasn’t too happy about going, or about anything, and I quoted, “All weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable seem to me the uses of this world.”

“That’s [Name’s] usual vibe,” my sister said.

I advised my niece that William Shakespeare had evidently felt unhappy like that at some points, I had, and I hoped she wouldn’t always feel down in the dumps.

Anyway, we did see at least parts of Longwood: the fountains, orchids, a few bonsai, begonias, petunias, topiary, and so on. On our way out, we walked past arriving visitors, one of whom was a bride in enormous hoopskirts, accompanied by (I presume) her new husband, and other relatives or friends. Several women covered their hair in Muslim fashion, and I wondered what their ethnic origin was. Maybe southwest Asian of some sort? I didn’t speculate aloud, but my sister wondered whether they were Indonesian.

Anyway, if they want to celebrate a marriage (I presume) and their adopted country’s national day by visiting Longwood, let them.

My sister and niece went off to see a local fireworks display; I kept the puppy company, although she did whimper a bit over the absence of her special people.