A few brief words from the enemy

If stone could speak, I know what the four faces on the mountain would have said last night. I know how they would have addressed the ranting creature invoking their names down there in front of them.

Washington would have said, "Don't put words in my mouth, sonny."

Jefferson would have said, "Did you even read what I wrote?"

Teddy would have wanted to fight him.

And Lincoln ...

Well. Lincoln would have said "Wait, you think I'd have a problem with taking down monuments to men who led an armed revolt against the nation I was leading? The hell are you smoking, Chief?"

Happy 244th, America. And allow me, as one of those evil enemies the President of the United States accused last night of trying to destroy Our Sacred History, to forsake Sportsball World momentarily in honor of Independence Day.

Unlike the President, see, I've cracked a history book or two in my time. And what I've learned from that is what my generation was taught as history in school, and for which the President made an impassioned defense, was a bucket of whitewash. It was cheerleading dressed up as scholarship, and the less savory bits were glossed over with a breezy "Moving right along ..."

Look. I get it. History, especially American history, is messy. There are no clean angles and unobstructed sightlines. There is, rather, nuance that often lies beyond the grasp of schoolchildren -- and, clearly, beyond that of Our Only Available Impeached President.

And so our history books, the ones the President wants to get back to, simplify. They obfuscate. And sometimes they just out-and-out make stuff up.

Truth is, we're a nation founded on a set of high ideals we have often blithely ignored. We have committed wrongs that have never been made right. And we've been our own worst enemy too many times to count.

Pointing this out does not make us destroyers of history, as the President would have you believe. It makes us illuminators of it. It makes us, not revisionists, but anti-revisionists.

A nation unwilling to acknowledge its shortcomings is a nation whose shortcomings will eventually undo it. A nation invited to regard as enemies those who do not subscribe to a particular ideology -- or who oppose particular leaders -- is a nation well down the road to becoming exactly what those leaders warn about.

I am one of those enemies, apparently. I am not a True American. I do not love America; I am, in fact, someone who wishes to destroy America.

That's what I got from Our Only Available Impeached President last night, as he stood in the literal shadow of men whom he understands not at all. I was told, in so many words, that there is no place for me here. I was told if I don't love him or subscribe to his extraordinarily toxic vision of America, then I hate my country and I want to teach my children to hate it, too.

Hell of a speech to deliver on Independence Day weekend. Hell of a message to bring to a nation riven by divisions Our Only Available Impeached President has actively fomented, and which he went right on fomenting last night.

Happy 244th, America.

Despite what you've been told, I really don't hate you.