I remember standing as a boy with my hand over my heart while the anthem played.
The grown-ups stood taller then—almost holy in their reverence—as if the brass and snare drums were channeling something sacred through the asphalt.
We didn’t understand the words, not really.
But we felt the weight of them.
Like scripture.
Like spellwork.
And in that moment, it felt good.
It felt right.
To belong.
To be part of something larger, something proud and strong and “free.”
We sang the words louder than we knew how to mean them.
But then life happened.
We grew older.
I began to see that some of what we were told didn’t hold up under the light.
If we were “the land of the free,”
why were some of us so much more free than others?
If we were “one nation under God,”
why was American life so clearly infected by ungodliness?
If this was “liberty and justice for all,”
why did some get more of it than others?
These are not just facts.
They are fractures.
And for me and many others, the ache beneath the anthem began to grow.
Not because we were ungrateful.
But because we were paying attention.
Some call it waking up.
Some call it betrayal.
But I think it’s something older, something deeper.
I think it’s the moment we stop confusing noise with music.
The moment we realize that a song isn’t sacred just because we’ve sung it long enough.
The truth is:
The story of America as a moral nation was always just that—a narrative crafted to feel true.
Not all of it false, but none of it whole.
It was crafted—consciously and carefully—to bind us to power with the language of freedom.
To stir emotion before we could ask questions.
To clothe nationalism in the vestments of virtue.
And it worked.
For centuries.
Until it didn’t.
Now, the dissonance is too loud to ignore.
The melody doesn’t ring true.
But here is the sacred thing:
that ache? That unease? That tearful knot in the throat when you first begin to question what you once sang with pride?
That is not despair.
That is the sound of coherence returning to your soul.
Because coherence doesn’t mean comfort.
It means truth that fits.
It means hearing discord and not singing along.
It means having the courage to write a new anthem—together.
We do not have to hate what we were given.
But we do need to outgrow it.
We do have to grieve it.
And we do have to stop pretending that a song can be sacred
if it demands silence in the face of suffering or injustice.
Let the anthem end.
Let the ache stay a moment longer.
And then let us listen…
for what still needs to be sung.