I greeted this day, shortly after midnight, by confessing that I was feeling uninspired and out of words, and would therefore be going to bed without having written my usual late-night diatribe . . . though not without first indulging in my favorite guilty pleasure: a generous portion of Haagen-Dazs coffee ice cream.

No, no, no! I said “Haagen-Dazs”!

Anyway . . . it is now 14 hours later, and I did manage to rack up about 10 hours of sleep. But — though I felt physically refreshed — I found upon waking that I was still missing that hoped-for spark of inspiration.

So I did what I often do: I went searching through my favorite quotations for the words of someone brighter and more eloquent (though sadly long-dead) to open my mind. And the first bit of wisdom that caught my eye was a brief observation by the Roman poet Virgil, written in the first century B.C., and still so apt today:

“So many wars, so many shapes of crime …
Unholy Mars bends all to his mad will;
The world is like a chariot run wild.”

– Virgil, The Georgics, Book I

Well, that was depressing . . . because in more than two millennia, it is obvious that we humans have actually regressed.

So I continued my search in one of my favorite columns, the History Channel’s “This Day In History.” And I was momentarily cheered by the reminders that today is the anniversary of the days on which Elvis Presley recorded “That’s All Right” (1954); Arthur Ashe became the first Black man to win Wimbledon (1975); and Dolly the sheep became the first successfully cloned mammal (1996).

But the history-lover in me was inexorably drawn to an item concerning runaway slave Frederick Douglass’ “What to the slave is the Fourth of July” speech, delivered during an Independence Day celebration in Rochester, New York, in 1852.

And there I found what I believe to be the cause of my current melancholy: further proof that, despite decades of enlightenment and advancement in human rights and civil rights legislation, we are again being pulled backward into the morass of widespread hatred and fear that invariably opens the door to fascism and war.

Douglass was, of course, speaking exclusively of Black slavery in the United States a decade before the Civil War and Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. But his words — when applied to all non-White, non-Christian, non-nationalists in today’s America — are as frighteningly true now as they were for those first African-Americans 173 years ago. And so they are worth quoting here:

“What to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham … your national greatness, swelling vanity … your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to Him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy — a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages.” [“This Day In History,” History.com, July 5, 2025.]

“ . . . bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy — a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages” . . . a perfect description of what we are seeing today in the mass deportation of honest, hard-working immigrants; the persecution of journalists, educators, and political leaders who dare espouse the freedoms granted us by our Constitution; and the massive transfer of wealth to the already wealthy, at the expense of the well-being and the very lives of the general populace.

Is it any wonder, then, that I sometimes find myself unable — or simply unwilling — to face up to another day of more of the same? But Frederick Douglass’ words have reenergized me, and my righteous indignation is back.

So I close with one further well-known quote, as a reminder to us all:

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
7/5/25