Beyond Survival

I’m Embarrassed, too.                                         July 20, 2021

by Susan Page Coffee

 

Are you proud to be an American?

 

Several Georgetown University coeds answered in an informal campus reporter interview before this past July 4^th that ‘no, they were not proud, and that they even found America embarrassing.’

 

I find something embarrassing, too:  that America has unfortunately produced you.  You, the ignorant, the insipid, the spoiled-rotten, the empty-brained private university students who could fit what you know about America’s history in your airpod cases – with the airpods in them.

 

If you knew anything of the greatness of this country and those who have sacrificed for it - and for you - not the poison that your worthless, leftest professors of history teach - you would hide your face in shame. Or should.

 

I’m embarrassed - and sure - that you will not find America’s greatness in the social media echo chamber where you hang out and look for all answers. Or, in a biased Google search. Or, on the same Wikipedia that its co-founder recently said was distinctly one-sided, left-sided.

 

I’m embarrassed that your shallow proclamations may have disturbed the peace of the thousands of World War I, World War II, Korean and Vietnam War veterans buried beneath the hallowed soil of Arlington National Cemetery. Or across the world in American cemeteries in Europe, the Philippines, and even China. Have you ever even been curious about those Americans who died in some far-off land fighting for the freedom of the French or the Filipinos or the Vietnamese against Hitler’s fascism, Imperial Japan’s aggression, or Mao’s and Stalin’s Communism? Or here at home fighting in the bloodiest war in American history to free slaves?

 

Or the loved ones left behind?

 

Do you find the firefighters and police who died climbing up the stairs of the World Trade Center to rescue people embarrassing? Or, the brave souls who overcame the hijackers on flight 92? How about the men and women in police uniforms who every day put their lives on the line to, among other things, make it safe for you to walk alone to your dorm parking lot to get in your new BMW or to jog along the Potomac at dusk?

 

Is it embarrassing that American men and women in uniform protecting our nation die every day in training accidents – leaving wives and children behind like my late husband John Ditto did while training in a Harrier jet in the Marine Corps? Joy was 10 and Kyle only 6.

 

I guess those almost 600 American Navy and Air Force pilots and airmen held as prisoners of war in North Vietnam in a horrific, filthy prison – some as long as 9 years – being tortured and isolated are an embarrassment to you. Like Navy pilots Everett Alvarez who survived 9 years and Jerry Coffee 7 years as POWs. Their love for this country, the United States of America, its founding principles, its institutions, and its Constitution to which they took an oath of allegiance are what kept them going all those long years of separation, torture, and deprivation. Embarrassing, right? What chumps!

 

Mostly I’m embarrassed that you don’t get this:  people don’t risk life and limb to come to countries that are embarrassing. People aren’t breaking the law to get into Cuba, China, Venezuela, or North Korea. Or, being honest, many other countries in the world – even so-called democracies.

 

I guess embarrassment of your country would have to include your IPhone 12, Apple Watch, Smart TV, internet service, Google, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or by flying on American or United to Maui for spring break. And by the car you drive, fast food you eat, clothes you order on Amazon? Your medical care, birth-control pills, and shots to keep you from getting polio – and Covid. All of these inventions, platforms, and discoveries were made possible by the freedom to innovate American Capitalism creates. Capitalism has not only provided the opportunity for a higher standard of living for all Americans, but has exported those opportunities to large and small nations across the world. A starving and failing Communist China with it’s 2 billion people today enjoys a middle class and high living standard due to US trade agreements resulting in almost all our manufacturing being done in China. (And for this gift, China vows to bury us?)

 

I am personally never embarrassed when volunteering in Africa and find thousands of Americans from US churches there year-round serving the poor. Almost 100% American. These generous folks, young and old, give up their time and money to travel halfway across the world to represent the US and their faith-in-action to help the less fortunate.

 

What have you done in that regard?

 

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris finds Americans at the very top in generosity compared to other nations. Don and Deyon Stephens, Americans, founded the faith-based, Texas-based Mercy Ships organization in 1978 that now sends hospital ships all over the globe providing free medical care and life-saving surgeries to the world’s neediest populations. Clearly an embarrassing case of American colonialism.

 

I could go on and on about the greatness of the United States of America. But you and your ignorance-based embarrassment are a dead-end waste of thought. You and your allies take up space that could be filled by the freedom-loving immigrants from any dozens of oppressive governments. They are so not embarrassed by the U.S. and don’t get your embarrassment at all.

 

I think I’ll just cancel you, like your generation is so fond of doing. And, I’ll vow that till my dying day I will celebrate, fight for, and pray for the most charitable, free, prosperous, and God-blessed nation in the world. America the beautiful.

 

It’s ironic that America was created from a simple God given desire by immigrants for independence from a big, over powering government – the same kind of government that your generation of airpod heads are now embarrassingly (and dangerously) embracing.