Wow, 248 years old! Just a couple more until the big 250! I know you’re already busy planning a huge semiquincentennial.

I hope you make it.

I know, I know, technically you’re only 236 if we count from the ratification of your Constitution, but you know we all like to count your Declaration of Independence as your real birthday.

(Admit it, you prefer that too.)

However you count, you’re still the oldest living democracy. Even Athens, your birthplace, didn’t make it past what, two hundred? And here you are closing in on a quarter millennia!

Remember when you were, what? 165, 166? You went off with your friends to fight Nazism. You were a Big Damn Hero back then. Can you believe after all that effort, Nazism is making a comeback, right here at home?

By your 200th, you’d finally started to recover from that fight, and your unfortunate “excursions” into South Korea and Vietnam, and were looking to put the legacy of Jim Crow behind you.

Though I guess Jim Crow never really went away, huh? It just sort of became... institutionalized.

We both thought you’d finally overcome that legacy when you turned 232, but just eight years later, you suffered what looked like an allergic reaction. You were so angry all the time, so divided. All of us feared you were nearing the end. We weren’t sure you’d even make it four years. Then you got real sick, and had to isolate yourself for a while. Those were some dark, dark days.

Though the fever broke, many of the symptoms persisted. There was that unprecedented flareup the January you were turning 245. That one really scared us. We thought for sure you were a goner.

To be brutally honest, the last seven or eight years feel a lot like it did when you were in your early 80s, and we’re not only worried about another episode like the one you had when you were 85, some people are explicitly threatening us with it. Just imagine, people want to put you through that again. You almost died then, you’re unlikely to survive another.

It might be time to take a good, long look at yourself in the mirror and be honest about how you got sick then, and how it’s still impacting you today.

Yes, sadly, you’re still very sick. Your major institutions are failing, and your little cousin, the Fourth Estate, is collapsing with you.

But as ill as you are, you’re also strong and determined. You’ve weathered so much. You’ve tossed aside kings, courts, and wannabe tyrants before.

And we have good people working to heal you. It’s touch-and-go right now, but we must have faith in you.

So, happy birthday, America. Hang in there. See you at 250.