On this July Fourth, I am thinking about immigrants, people like my parents who came to the United States seeking freedom from persecution and a better life for their children. 1/
I would argue that no one buys into the myth of America like immigrants, who often know little of the reality and the history they’re also buying into—especially if, like my parents, they’re coming from a closed, totalitarian country cut off from the world. 2/
They really believe in the ideals of America as set out on paper—and in America’s advertisements of itself abroad. Immigrants react differently when confronted with the reality, with the dark and not always heroic history of the place. 3/
For the last few years, I have watched my parents’ heartbreak and shock when America really, irrefutably revealed itself and its darkness to them. 4/
They have responded by reading and listening and engaging—and continuing to hope that America improves, that it comes out of this moment that much closer to its ideals. 5/
This July Fourth, I choose to join them in their optimism and their admiration of the process. 6/
What some see as a cultural revolution seeking to overturn the American Revolution, they see as democracy in action, the kind of real, live grappling and change they never had in the USSR. They came here for a myth, but have come to love the process. And I do, too. /end
