Parades

Yesterday, I marched with the Chalfont-New Britain Democrats in the Chalfont-New Britain Fourth of July parade.  

When I consider the sentence above juxtaposed to my post-navy life and politics, I recognize three seemingly odd parts: 1. Chalfont-New Britain, 2. Democrats, and 3. Fourth of July parade.

Chalfont, in Central Bucks County, Pennsylvania is where I grew up.  Even though my parents moved to another suburb in 2005, my in-laws coincidentally moved there in 2013.  They are active in the Chalfont-New Britain Democrats, and that was our connection to the parade.  

Many commentators have urged young progressives to leave the cities and “move back home” if we want to make electoral change happen.  Young people have flocked to cities for many good reasons, but one side effect is that our votes cast in Newark, New Jersey could have had more punch if they were cast in Chalfont, Pennsylvania, for example.  The residents of Newark, after all, didn’t come close to voting for Donald Trump.  And, even though Bucks County as a whole barely went to Clinton in the election (48.4% to Trump’s 47.8%), too many of the soccer moms (and dads) that became famous in pre-election punditry voted for Trump to help give him Pennsylvania and the Electoral College.

Democrats. Shortly after leaving the navy, I also left the Democratic Party.  I saw it as too institutionally linked to Wall Street and to war and the military-industrial complex.  I still see it that way.  (For a fuller rendering, see a piece I wrote last summer titled “Why ‘I’m with her’...sort of...at least until November 9” ).  Nevertheless, I re-joined the Democrats a couple months ago.  For one, I wanted to vote in the New Jersey gubernatorial (closed) primary.  

Certainly, it will be the people’s movements that build the peaceable kingdom.  They will neither strictly align with nor be co-opted by the Democrats or any party.  But for now, electorally speaking, the Democrats remain the only real check and balance against Trump and Trumpism.  In regards to war, peacemaking, and making peace with the Democrats, I look to Barbara Lee as a courageous model to follow.

Fourth of July parade. Since W’s landing in a jet and then giving a speech in front of a "Mission Accomplished" banner on the USS Abraham Lincoln in 2003, I’ve tried to stay away from patriotic parades and speeches.  No, W’s speech wasn’t on the Fourth, but all subsequent Fourth speeches and parades—and for that matter Memorial Day and Veterans Day speeches and parades—have reeked of the same shallow mix of nationalism and militarism, sometimes even blessed by God himself.  At least to my nose.

  

Perhaps that is not fair, though.  On two levels, it isn’t fair, I now recognize.  One, there have been courageous, nuanced, and meaningful remembrances, which in my unplugging I’ve overlooked.  Here is one such, by “Angry Staff Officer,” entitled "How I Lost at Patriotism - and How We All Lose".  And, two, when we cede our parades and national liturgies and even our definitions to the jingoes, what do we expect?  So, maybe we need to parade in addition to protest.

The Chalfont-New Britain Democrats’ theme for yesterday was simple: Save the Earth.  It’s something that should be a bipartisan issue but sadly is not.  The crowd along the parade route looked a little different from the crowds in Newark during the People’s Organization for Progress rallies, but I was grateful yesterday to be a guest in a group in the town I grew up in.  

      

Chalfont?...Democrats?...Parades?  Some days, we have to be on the outside.  Some days, we have to be on the inside.  And when we must be on the inside, as Richard Rohr often says of life in the Church, let’s be near the edge.