110704M cloudy: July 4, 2011 and 1981

(polished in the evening of the same day for English usages.)

Today is Independence Day, USA, or 國慶 in Chinese parlance. Americans drove UK, their parent country from the North American continent and founded their own country in 1776. So this is year 235.

Out of America for more than 20 years, I have already surrended my green card. But still remember July 4 vividly, especially for the year 1981 which I spent in its capital Washington, DC. a place where you really have the feeling of nation and history.

In New York, July 4 is just another day of having fun with fireworks. But in DC, you can feel patriotism in the American sense. And for the year I was there, I waited hours in the January cold on the sidewalk waiting for Ronald Reagan’s presidential inauguration motorcade to pass by, just to witness history, kind of once in a life time experience. But to our appointment, may be too cold that day, Reagan did not ride the And not long after, spent the whole day watching TV footage of an assassination attempt which put a bullet in Reagan's abdomen in downtown DC.

30 years later, my memory starts to fail, but still remember the name of the assailant John W. Hinckley and the first sentence that Reagan said to his wife after waking up in the hospital “Dear, I forgot to duck.”（a netizen corrected me, saying the actual sentence is "Honey, I DIDN'T duck."). And that was 18 years after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, a Democrat.

And as we know, Reagan recovered from the assault and led a back-to-RAW-capitalism movement with his UK counterpart Margaret Thatcher which changed the world and partly led to the fall of the Soviet Union together with its East European satellite. Liberals hated Reagan to the guts. But he was considered one of the greatest presidents in US history.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not a Reagan, not even a Republican follower. But just remember those monumental developments as a journalist who happened to be there. Just as I remember watching the space shuttle Challenger blow up about a minute or two after launch LIVE on TV while newspapers colleagues and I where assmblying stories for that day’s paper in the editing room. We throwed out the first two pages (at that time, we only published 16 pages a day, if I remember correctly) and started all over with the bigggest American tragedy of that decade. But no one complained. Although none of our editors was American in the narrow sense (some naturalized, but none born American), we understood the American sentiment and pay our respect to the astronauts and their family.

Republicans may hate Obama. But with Bin Laden and some of Al Queda leaders killed, forces reduction in Afganistan begun, Iraq, Iran and North Korea no worse than he took over. On the foreign side, you can’t blame him. So long as he does not make big mistakes on the domestic side, his re-election is more certain than ever, especially when there is no one on the Republican side that is anywhere close to him in charisma. HHH

May be that’s why, Obama is no longer afraid to challenge China openly. I said in another piece that US has never so openly hostile since the re-opening of China towards US in 1972. the next Obama term of 2012-16 will be something. Trouble ahead, Hu and Xi be aware.