I
was joking yesterday with my coworkers about #FirstWorldProblems, as I was
going to have to complete today’s to-do list on a small screen at home instead
of my large monitor at work.
I
didn’t think much of it at the time. But lying in bed this morning, ignoring my
alarm clock and thinking about Designing America,
it hit me how significant my supposed silliness actually was.
You
see, my next step since finishing my rough draft hasn’t been to edit. It’s been
to go through my historical highlights and notes to make sure I’ve gotten key
details and dates correct. And those highlights and notes, details and dates
spell out a nearly overwhelming amount of pain.
The
Revolutionary War was a miserable time period for those who had to live through
it.
I
mean absolutely horrific. The Brits were really quite rotten to the Americans.
That’s
no offense to the British at large any more than it’s an approval of Americans
at large. Any true student of history recognizes that there isn’t a perfect people
out there. We’re all capable of committing atrocities, and we too often run
with that potential.
Moreover,
during the course of the Revolutionary War – as I flat-out state in Maiden America – the Americans behaved
pretty darn badly a time or two as well.
Yet
with that all said, in my very detailed research, I never once came across a
story of American soldiers ripping open pregnant women, or crowding thousands
of prisoners of war onto ships to let them rot away for weeks or months under
the most inhumane conditions, knowing full well they’d die. (Many went insane
first.) Those brutalities fall squarely on the British back then.
For
kicks and giggles, I watched The Patriot
on Sunday; which, yes, is filled with historical inaccuracies. Considering how
that movie and Designing America
share the same bad guy, I found myself shaking my head and rolling my eyes over
and over again.
But
that wasn’t what stood out most to me. What stood out most were the battle
scenes, where men’s heads were blown off. Their legs shattered. Their stomachs
skewered by bayonets.
Because
all of that? That really happened.
Even
when that wasn’t going on, those soldiers starved more often than not. They
got little to no pay. And after the war, they barely got a thanks from a
citizenry that was too often thrilled to celebrate victories but apathetic or
downright hostile about providing anything else.
Black
and white, free and slave, young and old, rich and poor male and female: Those “rebels”
gave their time, their fortunes, their well-being, comfort and very lives…
The
result is that I can laugh about #FirstWorldProblems.
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