“The thing speaks for itself.”
The USA 4th of July holiday is widely celebrated as the birth of a nation, when a small group of people declared their independence from the kingdom of England. It’s a beautiful document, but is not the actual birth. That’s a little tougher to nail down depending on where you want to start, but after waging and winning a war, it became an official entity. That war ended Sept. 3 1983, which has always been when I thought the birthdate should begin. I mean, we don’t declare a baby born when we declare we want one, it happens later, when we welcome it to the world. The gestation between declaration and birth in this case was 7 years long and the delivery was painful and bloody. The beginning was messy and sloppy as the new nation attempted to find, and sometimes, correct it’s way on a quest for a more perfect union. That has always been a work in process.
I had always felt a mixed bag about this holiday, but through the years, it’s been mostly enjoyable. I looked forward to the get-togethers, the barbeques, the music and camaraderie, and in my earlier days, the fireworks. Perhaps I’ve become a curmudgeon after all these years, but I no longer enjoy fireworks, or rather, the spectacle they’ve become in my area. They begin with deafening booms, days before the 4th, and often carry on for days afterwards. People get careless, and start fires, or blow off their fingers; and the poor animals. It was enjoyable when it was celebrated for one day only, and the social contract agreed on that. It’s become a bloated mess, disguised as patriotism, and *permission to tell all your neighbors to fuck off rather than the coming together of community and honoring of a grand idea; freedom from tyranny and oppression, the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness. (*as anyone, who has every suggested on social media, on behalf of themselves or pets, that limits might be in order for explosive fireworks, knows)
Now, I’ve noticed a strong correlation between those who tell others to fuck off so that they can light off explosives and shoot their guns for days on end, and those who support disappearing people without due process and trafficking them off to for profit prison camps, both homegrown and foreign operated. They also seem oddly tilted toward stripping rights from people, especially women and the queer community. They’ll loudly yell, “fuck you, I’ve got rights”, while supporting the opposite of rights. It’s insane and they don’t accept the moral ambiguity of their stance. They’ve ruined, not just this holiday, but so much more. Traditions and structures, governmental, social and otherwise, are being smashed, re-arranged, and they no longer resemble the country that had promise.
And so, my memories of the years gone by, fireworks in the evening at the lake with family, or block parties with the neighbors, times filled with laughter and community, is ALL I have left today to honor because I cannot celebrate a country I no longer recognize, that even the founders would not support.
I just reread the Declaration of Independence, and it’s a clarion call. They admitted that mankind was more predisposed to suffer than to right themselves, and indeed, we are seeing that truth now. The founders took a radical step with that action, because it was so important, to throw off the chains of tyranny and because it was indeed an action, not simply a desire. Insistence that government derive their power from the consent of the governed, that people have a right, a duty, to throw off absolute Despotism and to provide new Guards for their future security… that is what is running through my head right now. Well, that and a strong sense that we need a rewrite, a 21st century declaration of independence, a revolution of people willing to throw off the shackles of suffering and despotism, even knowing it may be painful and hard.
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