Update: Again, many thanks to Tengrain as he decided to add this article to Crooks & Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up! Do note, this is the first of four articles I blogged on the 4th, so please take the time to view the whole site and read the other three! Hope you're surviving the summer!
One of the things I've gotten into the habit of doing on the 4th of July - yay, America - is going on a blog spree of at least four different articles covering the broad array of current political and cultural issues as we all celebrate our nation's independence from the British Crown, the lack of parliamentary representation to argue for more balanced taxation, and the ambitious capitalist greed of our Founders the American character of pursuing life, liberty, and property ownership happiness.
This 4th feels sadder, awkward, less celebratory: Due to the recent Supreme Court rulings demolishing Affirmative Action - which will cripple poor minorities' ability to use education to escape poverty - and allowing religions Christianity to actively discriminate others, there is a profound fear that our American rights - those rights of pursuing life and liberty and actual happiness (although affordable home ownership would go a long way towards resolving a major housing crisis) - are getting taken away.
I don't enjoy this feeling of despair, because it counters the hope we're supposed to feel on these Independence Days that we celebrate. We're supposed to be honoring the concepts of Life - that we are here, we are alive, and we can all contribute to the betterment of our families, friends, and communities - and Liberty - that we are free to express our love, free to express our anger at injustice, free to dance, free to travel, free to visit our friends and make new ones, free to find better jobs, free to find better homes, free to do the things we enjoy within moderation and with respect to other people's freedoms - and Happiness - the joy we derive from such Life and Liberty.
On this day I would argue we should take the time to honor those we love and use our liberty to express such joys. It's more than just fireworks - and I would argue to not use firecrackers because that upsets our dogs and cats and furry families - and barbeques, it's a time of getting together to celebrate each other. This should be the True Meaning of Independence Day.
And then tomorrow we get back to the work of redirecting our nation's long arc towards justice back on the path of Life and Liberty for all of us - White and Black and Latino and Asian and Native and in-between, Man and Woman and They, Straight and Gay/Lesbian, Cis and Trans, Born American and Immigrant American, all of us who respect the laws and polite boundaries of society without fear or hate - to achieve our moments of Happiness.
God Bless the lovers and the dreamers and the drag queens and the shiny happy people who are who they are. This is your 4th of July. And for the rest of you, God help you to give up that Fear and Hate that burns inside you.
We can be the better angels of our nature, America. And we should see that every 4th every year.
1 comment:
OK, so 7/4 is the perfect name for this because it is indeed an odd time. I shall endeavor to keep the bastards from ruining the meaning of the holiday, and see as far past the flawed beginnings of our country as I can so as to allow the better days to come more easily into focus.
Fire, works or otherwise, is not wise up here in the gap between wildfire scars, so I offer up for your enjoyment a different sort of pyrotechnics:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kc8H6USGR90
-Doug in Sugar Pine
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