07.04.11
Five reasons we celebrate Independence Day
Because it’s all about delusion now.
1. It’s allegedly tied to revolution and birth of a nation. The only people’s revolution we’ve had recently is the Tea Party. Which was a revolution by people afraid of others not exactly like them. It was revolt against women’s rights, any religion not fundamentalist Christian, gay people, Mexican and Spanish Americans, all immigrants — illegal or otherwise, who don’t have white skin, Muslims, the imagined conspiracy of sharia-law sapping and impurifying our bodily fluids, money not backed by the old gold standard, the hoax of climate change, Charles Darwin and the socialist guy from Kenya living in the White House.
These are principles upon which one can build a great nation, certainly.
2. Because cooking out is patriotic. Really. That’s what this brief brief “explainer” at Slate maintains.
3. Because it’s an excuse to shoot off fireworks while the US fireworks seen firsthand around the world today will be from Predator drones attacking others, bad or good — whatever, much poorer than us.
4. Related to number 3, because we’ve dispensed with declarations of war. They just slow things down.
5. Because there’s suppressed guilt and shame over how things have turned out and nothing works better as salve than waving the American flag, eating grilled hamburgers and hot dogs, shooting off fireworks, watching re-runs of Clint Eastwood in “Heartbreak Ridge” or genuflecting toward “the soldiers” even though you ain’t one, and muttering “But this is still the greatest country in the world.”
The fundraiser continues. You fancied that song/video with the exploding lyric blurbs and Lindsay Lohan thumbnail, right? I know you
did.