Our cultural cousins in the UK are celebrating Bonfire Night this day, which is their version of the 4th in terms of fireworks, revelry, and drunkenness. To them, it's in honor of the successful intervention against the Gunpowder Plot and the capture of Guy Fawkes, a key plotter responsible for the explosives packed under Parliament that could have well killed all of the British Government during the early years of James I(IV)'s reign.
Y'all remember Guy Fawkes.
(beat)
The Guy responsible for the V For Vendetta / Anonymous Masks.
Yeah, that Guy.
It's where we get the term "Guy" in the first place. Well, maybe. The word origin dictionaries would clear that up. ANYWAYS I DIGRESS.
The way things happened in British cultural history, Guy Fawkes evolved from an outright villain - he was going to blow up the King AND Parliament to overthrow Protestant rule! - into a somewhat noble anti-villain due to a grudging respect for his dedication (he held out against torture with a coolness that impressed James himself) and zeal in the face of a grey-and-gray moral world (the running joke that Fawkes was "the last man to enter Parliament with honest intentions" in spite of the fact his intent was to KILL A BUNCH OF OTHER GUYS).
And so as our cousins across the pond celebrate with beer and fireworks and "Penny for the Guy," we need to watch how a modern holiday evolved from an insurrectionist plot set in motion more than 300 years ago.
Remember, remember
The fifth of November
The Gunpowder treason and plot;
I know of no reason
Why the Gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot...
Because our nation just went through a bit of an insurrection as well just this past January.
In the months since, our legal system has been chasing after, arresting, and pleading out hundreds of trumpian rioters to answer for the damage and deaths caused that day. So far, other than screwing with the defendants' dietary needs, the accused haven't been put on the rack under the King's supervision for torturous confessions (something about the 8th Amendment it seems), and it doesn't look right now that many of the rioters are going to see the same fate that Guy and his co-conspirators received for their plot. So they got that going for them, which is nice.
However, we are cursed with the reality that a number of the rioters were colorful, crazy-ass morans who already inspired a number of memes and jokes. Especially this guy (sadly not named Guy, and sonofabitch he has a Wikipedia page before I did):
Do you think 300 years from now Americans are gonna be honoring the January 6th Insurrection with Bonfire nights and "Penny For Angeli"??? What rhymes with QAnon, for God's sake???
Remember Remember
The Sixth of Janu... dammit it won't even rhyme now!!!
/cries
1 comment:
If we are still around in 300 years, I would imagine we would have had to successfully deal with those clowns to make it that far. Remember, we haven't made our first 300 as a country yet, and our problems are of somewhat different characters than they were at the beginning.
-Doug in Sugar Pine
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