“The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.” — FDR, Inaugural Address, January 20, 1937.

These core American values articulated by Franklin Roosevelt would become my values. For over 80 years, that was the America we knew.

On July 1, 2025, America disappeared.

It was betrayed.

Cruelty replaced humanity as Republicans and their hideous legislation pulled the plug on healthcare and food assistance to millions both here and abroad. It marked the end of social compassion and the rise of an era of authoritarian oligarchy.

Where is that America that I pledged allegiance to?

Beginning in 1961, I spent every morning for the next dozen years standing tall next to my school desk with my right hand over my heart, pledging allegiance to a country that promised liberty and justice for all. We may not have realized our ideals fully, but we always moved to correct them.

From my earliest memory, there was the belief that Americans had the means to conquer poverty, disease, and ignorance. It was our moral obligation to take care of those in need. It was instilled in us that modern science and technology had made the American people the best educated and informed in history. As a result of these best of times, the fullest achievement of America’s values and ideals was possible.

These core American values became my values.

Now, a rotten-to-the-core group of men and women has infiltrated our government, destroying our system.

My hand grew, as did the country. I watched it change, stumble at times, and grow. It’s what I expected of America. That was American Exceptionalism to me – our ability to constantly move forward, help those in need, expand our knowledge, and right our wrongs.

We would always strive to do better.

These core American values became my values.

That America is gone….

I learned the Pledge of Allegiance in a suburban classroom filled with second-generation Americans. They were predominantly Italian, Eastern European, and Irish. As a third-generation American with grandparents born in this country, I was an anomaly. I was proud of that history but never felt myself more of an American than my classmates, the grandchildren of immigrants who had travelled in crowded ships across the Atlantic, landing in Ellis Island. They left pogroms and crushing poverty with their meager belongings, clutching tightly onto the hope that America promised.

America delivered.

The ICE Age

Today, immigrants hide in fear as masked men roam the streets of our cities and towns like the Gestapo, scooping up mothers, fathers, and children. Someone’s sister, brother, husband, or wife. Our police state is now fully funded.

We saw our leaders laughing in front of steel cages in a concentration camp called Alligator Alley. This quickly built  detention center for deported immigrants in the middle of the Florida Everglades is surrounded by crocodiles and pythons

How do our elected representatives sleep at night knowing they are sending people to concentration camps, depriving American citizens of health care, making people homeless, and taking food from children and babies?

How do they live knowing others will surely die because of their actions?

We have become what we once condemned.

I still have my core values, I just want my America back.

Today, we are the huddled masses yearning to be free from this tyranny.