Over the past year, I’ve slept in a haunted hotel in Nevada, gotten my shoes wet recording sounds of the ocean in La Jolla, Calif., lost a laptop on the prairie of Colorado and driven through the Navajo Nation in a rainstorm.
But everywhere I went, I asked people the same question: As the U.S. turns 250 years old, what does the country mean to you?
Rob McDermott runs the Morenga Palms RV Park outside of Wenden, Ariz. He said the country means a lot to him. He retired from the Army with 22 and a half years of service after going to Iraq and Afghanistan each twice, and Kuwait.
“ People are looking at the Constitution that people have fought and died for and like it’s just a piece of trash,” McDermott said. “Everything’s ‘I have a right to this’ and ‘I have a right to that.’ Well, look at the Bill of Rights. That’s what you have a right to.”
I asked what he was referring to specifically. He said the Second Amendment.
“Everybody’s got a right to keep and bear arms,” McDermott said. “We also have a right to overthrow a tyrannical government. I mean, that’s our Founding Fathers. That’s where they got away from. And if our government gets a little too big for their britches, it’s required that we step up and take charge. I think that’s something that people have forgotten about and I think that’s pretty important.”
Here’s what other people told me:
Joe Westerlund, town manager of Tonopah, Nev.
“ I love America. This is the greatest country in the world,” Westerlund said. “I don’t care what administration’s in or how bad it seems. Go to another country and you’ll see just how great this country is. It really truly is the land of opportunity.”
Harry Chahal, manager of a motel and pizza shop in Tonopah, Nev.
“ American new generation, they don’t want to work. Kids, they don’t want to work. Too much, like, games. Too much technology. They don’t want to do any physical work. You know, they want to make easy money,” Chahal said. “When we come up here, we work 16, 17 hours a day. My kids, they can work maybe 10 hours. My grandkids, they’re going to be lazy.”
Dina Neal, Democratic state senator representing a district in North Las Vegas, Nev.
“ America is in a battle for its principles and its identity, and I feel that there are some sacred principles that are being crushed under this particular regime of government, and it is violating freedom of speech, freedom of association, and it violates some of the constitutional principles that we hold dear, and that’s unfortunate.
“I’m hopeful just because I believe the light bulb is turning on for American citizens that this particular government and the way that it is functioning is not safe for any American.”
Jaynie Parrish, executive director of Arizona Native Vote, on the Navajo Nation
“ It’s very complicated, is what I’m feeling. It’s good, bad, everything in between.
“What I’ve learned in this work, no matter what it is, it could be education, healthcare, fighting for tribal sovereignty, our people have the long view. So this 250 years or even 500 years of disruption of settler and colonialism, it’s a small period in a 10,000-year-plus history that we have. I look at it that way, and I think a lot of our people look at it that way.
“We’re going to be here long even after, if there is even a United States, we’re going to be here even after that, because we’re from here.”
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
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