I was sworn in as a citizen of the United States yesterday. And I'm damn proud of it.
It's so easy to forget how good we really do have it. I hear people bitch and moan about how the current administration is going to ruin the world. But I know that, on its worst day, America is a better, freer, stronger place than 75% of the rest of the world on its best day. And I know that, while America's glory days might be on hiatus, we will be the great, proud, glorious nation that we were once again.
This is a young country, barely in its adolescence, really. We have to learn from our mistakes, and we are just waking up to that fact. As the population of the country opens its eyes, and begins to see clearly the events of the past 200 years from a global perspective, it will demand change.
On another note, as I sang the national anthem yesterday, along with 1242 other people, I couldn't help but notice that not ONE of the 30 people immediately around me was able to sing it without the lyric guide in front of them. And maybe half that number couldn't remember the words to the Pledge of Allegiance.
Maybe I'm jaded, but shouldn't it be required, when you renounce your allegiance to your former homeland, that you be able to recall the words to this extremely moving piece of music, and the pledge of allegiance to your NEW homeland without a cheat-sheet??
Anyway, I'm proud to be an American. And while I will never stop loving the soil on which I was born, and will never stop speaking my first and native tongue, I pledged to be a good American, and a good American I shall be.
