America’s strength has always been twofold.
Happy lazy day-after-Independence-Day! It’s not a national holiday, but it should be and already informally is, like the day after Thanksgiving, or New Year’s Eve when you’re 21. I hope you enjoyed yours as much as I did. We made the best of some fairly rotten Chicago weather during the day to grill out, watch The Great Escape for the first time ever, then enjoy some post-thunderstorm fireworks from our roof.
Then — ah, city life — it was time to gird my ears for the after-party of “homebrew fireworks” that continued on all around us well into the damp but blessedly cool and breezy night. And it was indeed a scene. There was a guy on my roof working with a box of military-grade artillery — not just noisemakers but impressive glittering explosions, an authentic show for the whole neighborhood.
By the time I finished a patriotic WWII doubleheader with Where Eagles Dare at 10:30 p.m., I craned my head out to look toward the Lake, and Chicago looked like the aftermath of a war zone: a bank of fog had rolled in to mix with endless reams of fireworks launched from all points in the city, and in the lingering half-light the entire downtown was thick with smoke. I could no longer see the Sears Tower from my balcony — and it’s a mile away. Off into the night the fusillades continued, unabated, coming closer. Drums, drums in the deep.
No, I wouldn’t trade Chicago for the world.
And 250 years from the day when the Founders first declared independence, we’re still riding high at Western civilization’s apex — except for that one dark period between 1985 and 1987, when Starship scored three No. 1 singles on the Billboard charts. But we survived “We Built This City,” and so too will we survive our current season of disaffection and domestic storm. (As even Starship could have told you: nothing’s gonna stop us now.)
America’s strength has always been twofold: our force projection capability and geopolitical powers (Trump appreciates one of these, not the other) are the manifest expressions of our might, but our deeper strength doesn’t announce itself with missiles and jets or even treaties and alliances. It lies in our country’s endless regenerative resilience, which is a result of our uniquely open and dynamic culture. We know how to take a punch in the face and get right back up again.
And this weekend proved it again. Some of you have no doubt already seen this viral video of a skydiving accident at an Independence Day rodeo in Folsom, Calif., on July 3. No description will quite do it justice: A skydiver identified as Ross Vail was parachuting in with an American flag in his hands. He accidentally hooks the flagpole on the tree line during his final descent and gets yanked down face-first into and through the awning of the Coors Light tent below.
The guy is, miraculously, unharmed — he suffered only a cut on his lip, which is as close to “barely a scratch” as possible — so you don’t have to feel guilty about laughing at how outrageously funny the clip is, a Johnny Knoxville–caliber pratfall. (I have watched it maybe 30 times already; it was a cookout favorite for everyone.) But the reactions from many — including in the post linked above, which was made from an account in the U.K. — are tiresomely predictable in their attempt to draw the easy metaphor between a hapless skydiver face-planting and America’s recent global exploits. “You couldn’t make this up. If you plotted this in a movie or TV show it would seem too ridiculous and unsubtle.”
That’s right, it would. Especially because it misses the forest for the trees. You might think this skydiver crash is a metaphor for America at 250. But I see a guy who walked it off with only a cut on his lip, went right back up in the air, and successfully completed the jump again later that day. That is the full story — and, it seems, the far more profound metaphor for America at 250.