Talk about ironic observances, the annual Fourth of July fireworks at our local park has been canceled due to budget woes. No doubt the neighborhood dogs will be appreciative of the peace and quiet, but since learning this news, I have been trying to figure out a substitute tribute that would be equally fitting.
With knee-jerk flag-waving and latter day tea parties of the faux patriotism genre obviously to be avoided at all costs, it occurs to me that the way a real patriot would celebrate is to secede. That’s right, get up and walk away and start a new country because this one is showing definite signs of being about as life-like as a used cherry bomb.
After all, only in America:
Are you likely to be denied urgent health care for lack of seven dollars.
A major tobacco company helps to write tobacco regulatory legislation.
The winner of the Presidential election is the one who gets the most money from the defense industry even when the majority of his supporters want to get out of the unpopular wars of the last eight years.
The people who make laws regulating corporations take money from those same corporations?
Illegal detention is a happening event despite campaign promises and a whole lot of laws to the contrary?
The President thumbs his nose at the LGQBT community numerous times, with the vague mention of addressing their concerns later, especially the baffling back-peddling on Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and DOMA?
Bailed out banks raise salaries to get around bonus caps and have the chutzpah to raise interest rates despite promises not to.
We listen to climate change skeptics that are funded by oil companies and continue to insist (and here), against all evidence (and here) that there are such things as clean, safe and affordable coal and nuclear. energy.
The government not only blames the wrong people for what happened on Sept. 11, 2001, but actively works to cover up the real culpability. As Mark Karlin, editor and publisher of Buzzflash accurately points out,
It was always one of the great betrayals of the American public, dead Iraqi civilians, and our killed and wounded service men and women that the Bush Administration — and particularly Cheney — used anti-terrorism as a guise to secure control over oil fields.
Clearly, not only absolving, but actually legally covering up for Saudi financing of terrorism is a deal with the devil: You keep sending us the oil and you can do whatever you want to keep your regime in power, even if it’s paying off the terrorists who committed 9/11.
Where a pop-singer is memorialized in butter at the Iowa State Fair and the story appears not in The Onion but in America’s newspaper. (With the bizarre emphasis we place on the Iowa caucuses during presidential elections, this litmus test of values should not be taken lightly.)
Yes dear citizens, these are the remains of our country. It has gotten to the point where it feels like we’re living in a surrealistic sequel to Orwell’s 1984. And there are many more signs of imminent failure, but the above should suffice to make the point, if not keep you up at 3 a.m. Not a scenario that leads one to want to celebrate. America, love it or leave it. Or time to say enough is enough and fight like hell and take our country back with real substantive change.
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