Pride, Patriotism: to me it means one thing regarding my American Citizenship: gratefulness. We still haven't been able to create a Utopian form of governance, and so despite they many ways that we are an advanced civilization, people tend to focus on what we are doing wrong.

And that's fine, that's how you keep mending the endless revisions of a democratic republic. It doesn't always happen overnight though; many of our greatest achievements had to brew for decades beforehand. Shit sucked, and shit still sucked, and people advocated and complained and nothing happened. Some of them died and never saw the eventual progress they spawned. And I want to make sure that people understand that. I know that being a young adult, and starting to hang a toe over the popular newz buzz-saw can make one cynical.

But trying to see what we get wrong is meaningless without knowing what we do right - or more importantly, what the people who lived before us, and risked everything - thousands of people, over the course of nearly 400 years, to give us the genius framework that is our founding documents, and to keep fighting for them. Sometimes it went wrong for the wrong reasons (not doing right by African Americans, from the earliest slavery, to red-lining and beyond), and sometimes it was wrong while trying to do the right thing (the Alien and Sedition Act). But we were, and still are among the free-est people the world has ever seen. America has been most people's first choice to make a new start for quite along time.

I personally have deep ancestry here, and that doesn't make me any better than a recent immigrant who wants to be just as American as I am (they can). But it has perhaps made it easier to see the long-view. I've been a fan of American History for a while, in particular New England (the more I learn the more I realize I know so little). Seeing some of the historical stuggle really puts our modern issues into context. I feel I have a good handle on seeing through the 24/7 scream-fest to see the long term issues, the power imbalances, and how to fix them. Of course someone else can do the same thing, and come to different conclusions than me. I'm an American, so that is just baked-in, I expect that and welcome it.

And so to be grateful for the country that was here for me to be born into, I owe it a duty. My duty is to stay informed, to not let my brain get hi-jacked by ideologues - on both sides, who want to sell me the political version of fast food. I owe it to citizens who died defending this country. I owe it to the thousands who spend thankless hours fighting over town budgets as representatives of their neighbors. I owe it to the Founders, who took the most enlightened, current ideas of their time, ran with them, and risked everything to see if we could rule ourselves. I owe it to the ones who got political, and the activists, the ones who are famous and the ones who failed and history has forgotten. Many took risks for self-interest, but many did it to make a better America.

When we stop raising our voices, or think we are but are just following a herd, we will lose America. And so I'm grateful, Patriotic, but I've lived enough to know that that realization means I take on a debit.