Enjoy your patriotic holiday.

As you salute the flag, and watch the fireworks, and eat hot dogs and fill your heart with the pride of what it means to be an American—Please do an equally American thing—at least it was at one time, an American thing—and think of those who suffer under torturous regimes world wide, those who do not enjoy the alleged freedoms you enjoy; think of those babies locked in cages, without diapers, sleeping on concrete floors, wrapped only aluminum foil blankets, probably forever separated from their families.

As much as Betsy Ross and apple pies and hot dog eating contests, that too is a very real part of your America.

Then maybe ponder how this can be allowed to continue when it is NOT, despite what you’ve learned from hours of research on Fox News, illegal, to enter the United States to seek asylum.

Maybe you can stop by the Statue of Liberty and read:

“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,the wretched refuse of your teeming shore.Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Maybe later do some light reading, like on the differences between patriotism and nationalism.

You don’t need to pretend to have the answers to simply agree that something like this is profoundly and fundamentally wrong and completely Un-American. We just need to start with, “There is a problem, this ain’t how you fix it.”

It costs us nothing to say, “This is wrong and we cannot stand for it!” It requires no allegiance or agency. It requires only the decency we claim defines us.

‘Murcia…