Fourth of July

Another Fourth of July has marched in and out. Small towns across America like Sonoma parade in patriotic fervor, even permitting the dissidents and dissenters their voice in the march, past reviewing stands with waving local politicos. Happy, joyous, bright, stepping to the local band, adorable gaggles of children in costumes, wannabe cowboys and girls on horses, old-time fancy cars and their proud papa owners, fire truck squirting the kids and barbecue and fire works to top it off. And here comes Bill Moyers to piss on the parade. To remind us in that soft Texas drawl, that annoying sting of truth and morality to pop the bubble of belief of the myths that sustain us. The Fourth: Independence Day, Freedom and Liberty Day, to welcome in a new world order, a new kind of government that guaranteed equality and justice and rights for all. “… The ideal of equality Jefferson proclaimed, he also betrayed. He got it right when he wrote about "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" as the core of our human aspirations. But he lived it wrong, denying to others the rights he claimed for himself. And that's how Jefferson came to embody the oldest and longest war of all - the war between the self and the truth, between what we know and how we live.” –Moyers “What we know and how we live.” But those foundational rights, so eloquently expressed were not the reality that was lived. The black men and women were only free to be worked to death, have their children taken away, and be lashed and worse at the whim of another. Women were free only to serve where they were told or allowed to, generally for a pittance or nothing at all. Native Americans were free to be slaughtered and their lands stolen, just like before. Voting was only for (some) white men. What a bummer, these nasty facts, but that was Independence Day then. And now? Technology aside would it be a shock unimaginable for the Founders to drop into these times: society integrated with all colors, same sexes married, equality under the law, public education and the voluminous legal restrictions that keep us (mostly) in check? I like to think the best of them – Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Paine – would say,” “Yes, this is what we had in mind, but could never do it then.” But that’s wishful rumination given how the Native populations were driven from Their lands and their numerous cultures systematically destroyed by these and ensuing U.S. presidents. Wishful thinking considering the American Empire’s colonization of foreign lands in the ever-expanding interests of U.S commerce. The chasm of hypocrisy between what was said on paper and what was done in practice is a Grand Canyon-sized one, and we are obliged to acknowledge it to ourselves and teach it to those who’ll replace us. We live in the United States of Amnesia, Gore Vidal told us, and it seems true. Each time we seem to forget the reality of war – what really happens to the people caught up in it, perpetrators and victims alike – from one to the next. Each time it begins with a patriotic fervor and ends in a tally of bodies and treasure. Each time we say, “How stupid. What a waste!” and yet it doesn’t take much to set it all in motion soon again. Is it amnesia, willful ignorance, or some sort of insane denial to reckon with what is? Author, journalist Chris Hedges grimly reminds us of some of the truths we’d rather not face. “Catastrophic climate change is inevitable. Arctic ice is in terminal decline. There will soon be so much heat trapped in the atmosphere that any attempt to scale back carbon emissions will make no difference. Droughts. Floods. Heat waves. Killer hurricanes and tornados. Power outages. Freak weather. Rising sea levels. Crop destruction. Food shortages. Plagues.”—Hedges The truth is the chasm that divides us in this country has never been so great save for the Civil War. The disparity in wealth and power between the small percentage at the top and the rest of the populace is more extreme than ever before. Healthcare, provided to all in every industrialized country on Earth, is still doled out as a privilege rather than a human right. Our public education system ranks far below many other countries, while our incarceration level is higher than most of the others. And the list goes on. But it’s far easier to don our red, white and blue outfits and parade around, stuff our faces with barbecue and tell ourselves and any who’ll listen what a great country we are and how superior to all others. Even though it’s just not true. The ideals that were set forth in print from the minds of those extraordinary men some 230+ years ago point the way toward the goal of an egalitarian society, something unknown in history before that time, but far yet to be reached. And all the patriotic ballyhooing and backslapping won’t make it so.