I feel like a lot of the problems with America right now stem from people seeing July 4th as the foundation and start of this country and not any time before that. Here's how I see it: if you were an immortal that was born on this land a couple thousand or even just eight hundred years ago, you would have a completely different view of immigration, who's land this is and putting certain people's kids in cages. This country didn't start when the British came here as there was a perfectly functioning country before they arrived. Part of this land was Mexico and the remaining belonged to other people who were indigenous to it. The true natives. Life was going how it was going, regardless of how you may have felt about it. There was an established order and respect for how things were run. For as long as time can remember, things were how they needed to be, then a boat arrived.
This is not the foundation, this was the start of a pillage. The start of genocide. The start of slavery on this land. Those were not the ways of those that were already here, those were the ways of those who infiltrated this land. In other words, “They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people." If the natives felt the same way about immigration as those colonizers, the pilgrims would be separated from their families, kids locked in cages and eventually sent back on their way. Instead, the natives were welcoming and the colonizers took what they wanted by force. Nothing has been the same since.
And if you were an immortal, you would have watched an existing society on this land formed by people who are native to it, then suddenly an influx of those who want to takeover and bring the worst atrocities to it, then over time watching those same people claim they own this land, claim their declaration as the true foundation, then set up laws and walls to prevent anyone else from acting as they did by committing the same atrocities.
These are FAR from the ways of those that REALLY started and had a country going before the British showed up INCLUDING the Mexicans who owned part of this land. So when you're thinking and celebrating the “founding” of this country, think about what was truly established that day by reflecting on the REAL history of what came before and lead up to that. Maybe you'll have a little more respect for human life, true sacrifice and the history of oppressed people.
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