The Blue Angels Left Skid Marks on My Roof

I was tending to the backyard garden a little while ago when I heard and felt the roar and rumble of two jet engines. I looked up just as an F-18 Hornet came screaming overhead. The pilot banked hard left at what seemed like tree top level. I could see some detail in the cockpit and then the fighter blasted out of sight. If that doesn’t send chills of excitement up and down your spine along with waves of national pride then you are probably dead.

This is Navy Week in Tampa. The Blue Angels are in town for an air show this Saturday and Sunday at MacDill Air Force Base. We only live a couple of miles from the Dale Mabry gate and when the Angels or the Air Force Thunderbirds are in town we are in the flight path for parts of their shows. To experience the power of these war machines as they tear through the sky just above our roof ranks right up there with a really intense orgasm…well, almost.

I have needed something to give me a renewed sense of national pride. As a country we haven’t done anything lately that we should be proud of unless that religious scum from a Kansas church protesting at an American soldier’s funeral gives you the warm fuzzies. Or, maybe the hate filled ranting of the Becks and Limbaughs of the airwaves plucks your patriotic heart strings. The protesting Tea Baggers ridiculing a physically impaired “fellow American” was definitely something…that turned my stomach. The TV ads from the Republican Party of Florida slamming Alex Sink are understandable up to a point. That point comes when the ad says, “she is not one of us; she is one of them.” So who the hell do these Republican [insert your own descriptive here] think “them” is anyway? I thought we were all one; humans first and Americans second. I know that I am a human and an American so I must be one of “them” because I sure as hell am not “one of us.”

How about the dumbing-down of America? Should we be proud of the Texas School Board’s decision to not include people in the history books that no one has ever heard of and to re-write history to conform to some arbitrary religious interpretations? How about the Palins of this country who view stupidity as a virtue and intelligence as a liability? Does anyone remember Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia? It is scary to imagine this country in ten years or so when kids like those brainwashed Kansas children wearing the “God Hates Fags” T-shirts reach adulthood. If that is the new generation we have to look forward to then I think global warming or a failed economy will be the least of our worries.

With each passing day I have become more ashamed to call myself an American. The actions, or should say the inactions, of the U.S. Congress and the Florida legislature haven’t helped. The “I’ve got mine, so fuck you” attitude that is so pervasive in this country, not to mention the overall arrogance of thinking that we are better than anyone else in the world boggles my mind and sickens my stomach. The local owner of the dry cleaners I used to patronize who said the only way to take back “our” country was through armed rebellion made me glad I still have the means to defend myself against traitors like him. It scares the shit out of me to think how many more in this country feel as he does. Maybe like the lunatic fringe on the right, I need to visit my local firearms emporium more often. And, I have to ask, “Take the country back…to what?”

I really needed to see that naval aviator in the Blue Angels jet fly over today. It made me think that there still maybe hope for this country and maybe one day I will again be proud to say to the world, “I am an American.” For now, a four jet formation with a trailing fifth just flew past my office window. I need to go outside and cheer on the rest of the practice session. These aviators are Americans, and I am one of them.