Our Epochal 244 Anniversary

===============
Happy birthday, USA! America marks 244 years of independence in troubled times ... once more
Larry McShane, Daily News (07/03/20)

Happy birthday, America!

The busts of U.S. presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln tower over the Black Hills at Mount Rushmore National Monument on July 02, 2020 n ear Keystone, South Dakota. President Donald Trump is expected to visit the monument and make remarks before the start of a fireworks display on July 3.

A few things about this year’s celebration, No. 244 since our nation’s Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776: No candles or cake, since you’re still wearing that face covering (well, most of you, anyway). Downsized barbecues (hello, social distancing!). Fewer fireworks (except at Mount Rushmore).

And our nation is still reeling from COVID-19 while reckoning with its history of racial inequality.

While this year’s holiday will be remembered for civil unrest and the pandemic, it’s hardly the first time the Fourth of July arrived in troubled times: One year before the nation’s Bicentennial, the city of New York nearly went bankrupt. There were two World Wars, a Civil War, wars in Vietnam and Korea. A devastating depression. The AIDS crisis. The flu epidemic of 1918. The cholera epidemic of 1832.

And way back on July 2, 1776, British troops began arriving on Staten Island — just two days before the original Independence Day as war loomed.

“Weeks after July 4th, when Britain invaded the city, most of the population fled, martial military law was imposed and the city was occupied for the rest of the war, through 1783,” said historian Mike Wallace, a Pulitzer Prize winner for “Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898.”

“Yes, we’ve seen worse.”

It wasn’t always birthday doom and gloom in the U.S.A. through decades. The Fourth of July frequently delivered more inspiring and uplifting moments in both our local and national history.

Back in 1827, the state of New York abolished slavery. In 1855, the first edition of Walt Whitman’s poetry collection “Leaves of Grass” was published in Brooklyn. And in 1884, the Statue of Liberty was presented to the United States by the French government.

And there’s more: The Nathan’s hot dog eating contest debuted in 1916. In 1939, the dying Hall of Famer Lou Gehrig announced his retirement in Yankee Stadium — calling himself the “luckiest man in the world.” In 1969, John Lennon and Yoko Ono released their single “Give Peace a Chance.”

And 16 years ago, the cornerstone of the new Freedom Tower was put in place at Ground Zero.

Construction workers move the cornerstone for the new Freedom Tower into place during the ceremony at the World Trade Center site July 4, 2004 in New York City.

Construction workers move the cornerstone for the new Freedom Tower into place during the ceremony at the World Trade Center site July 4, 2004 in New York City. (Monika Graff/)

What does it all mean? Opinions vary. Bob Dylan, our longtime national soothsayer, recently offered this thought on COVID-19.

“I think it’s a forerunner of something else to come,” he warned. “It’s an invasion for sure, and it’s widespread, but biblical? You mean like some kind of warning sign for people to repent of their wrongdoings? That would imply that the world is in line for some sort of divine punishment ... Maybe we are on the eve of destruction.”

Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, during a television recent appearance, envisioned a silver lining.

Macy's Fourth of July fireworks go off in front of the Statue of Liberty in New York City on Tuesday, June 30, 2020.

“We’ve been through really tough times before,” she noted. “And we did emerge better as a result of them. History tells us that you can have hope, you can have perspective. You can make things better. We just have to set our minds to it.”

And Wallace suggested it could fall somewhere between the two.

“I suspect one critical question historians might ask is what role did the devastation of the plague play in the explosion of anti-racist demonstrations,” he said. “I think we might find that by so profoundly cracking open ‘business as usual,‘ it inadvertently liberated long-accumulating fury and the social, political and economic order.

“It’s perhaps an epochal moment. Or perhaps it will subside with the death rate.”