I spent 25 years of my life serving my country in uniform. I love the idea and ideals of my country deeply. Which is why celebrating this birthday of our country as if everything is normal feels so wrong. 1/9

Over 130,000 of us have died so far from COVID-19. Literally thousands of those deaths were likely caused by incompetent government response and a deliberate effort to make public health efforts (such as masks and social distance) into an issue of partisan division. 2/9

We are reeling from racial injustice; study after study has shown severe systemic bias in criminal justice, economic opportunity, educational attainment, and life expectancy. But POTUS threatens to veto the NDAA if we change the names of bases honoring confederate traitors . 3/9

Being proud to be an American isn’t about Lee Greenwood-style jingoism. It isn’t about chants of “U-S-A.” The arc of history naturally bends toward power and wealth. What has made the US special in the past is that our arc has bent toward justice. 4/9

But this doesn’t ‘just happen.’ This is the product of citizens who are dissatisfied with the moral distance between who we claim to be and who we are. That distance began with the stirring words of Thomas Jefferson about all men being created equal, even as he owned slaves. 5/9

If our story is to be one we’re proud of, we must—especially those of us who have unconsciously and without malice benefited from the bias in our system—commit to some level of personal discomfort, sacrifice, or disadvantage, in order to achieve true equality for all of us. 6/9

I still believe this is possible. I still believe that this is what America can be. But this is not who we are today. And so, I can’t blithely join in the normal celebrations of a country “conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” 7/9

But I can use this holiday to remind myself that if I felt these values were worth putting my life on the line in uniform, they are certainly worth uncomfortable conversations, including those that reveal to me how I have fallen short in helping to realize our ideals. 8/9

So, this year, while I honor the idea and ideal, I ache for the reality that is America. And, like our founders, I am challenged to commit “my life, my fortune, and my sacred honor” to helping to bring our reality closer to that ideal. 9/9