JakeD
07-04-05, 10:33AM
Happy 4th of July.
This holiday should not be twisted to celebrate the current administration. This holiday should not be twisted to justify blatant flag-waving and "liberal" bashing. This holiday should not be twisted to combine politics and religion into a volatile cocktail of partisan bullshit. This holiday should not be used as an excuse to get piss drunk, scream "GAWD BLESS AMURIKA", and throw up all over your living room rug before passing out face-down in a dirty litterbox.
But it will be.
Patriotism is subjective. You can ask several different people from vastly different walks of life, and chances are you'll get 3 differing definitions out of five people (if not more). Chances are that a couple of these definitions will make you nauseous. They might give you hope. They might insult the French.
But what they will not do is serve as justification for a fucked-up partisan agenda.
Patriotism isn't limited to a single administration. Patriotism is NOT cowering behind pro-Iraq rhetoric while refusing to serve the war you so rabidly support. Patriotism isn't letting crooks creep in and steal your standards of living out from under your nose under a cheap, weak facade of morals and religious kinship. And patriotism is not undermining the words and ideas of our founding fathers because you live under the delusion that the current administration has your best interests in mind.
The United States of America were founded on dissent. A break from tradition. The capitulating feeling of "We're not going to take this shit anymore" echoed in the sentiments of thousands of Brits, tired of the seemingly unfair rulings of the monarchy. After all we had fought for, the signature of the Declaration of Independence was a benchmark in American history. Not only a declaration of independence, but a declaration of intent. No more would we suffer the burden of unfair ruling, we would mold and shape a government according to the ideals of the men and women involved. Men and women who made it a point to risk their lives, traverse the Atlantic Ocean, and start life anew on a seemingly untamed continent. They were willing to do whatever it took to salvage their standards of living and to stand up for their beliefs, their inalienable rights as a human being.
Fast forward to now. Many of us could use that sort of tenacity nowadays. Many of us have become complacent under an administration that hurls insults at us. Not only insults to what should be the collective understanding of common sense and personal integrity, but insults to us as we stand, the people, collected, under the flag. We're handed pure lies and told that they're the truth. Many give their lives or the lives of their loved ones to go fight for their country, a simple ideological concept that used to have some dignity. Used to have some meaning. People blame either party for the decline of military morale, but honestly: it's not a partisan issue unless you're looking at the government that backs such wars.
World War II was the last hurrah of true blue-blooded patriotism, war with a reason, a collective iron fist smashing through one of the most tumultuous times in global history. We worked together with other countries in a group effort that spanned the globe in order to quash a threat that was very real and very dangerous.
And now, we have nothing. We fight to scrape up recruits from wherever we can. The deficit is disgustingly bloated, like a distended cancer leeching off of the shadow of what used to be a respectably strong economy. An isolationist policy enacted by a dangerously stubborn administration has gleefully shoved away all support from other nations and gambled away our future on a pack of lies.
And still we keep our mouths shut. Still we obey when told to raise our flags and keep cheering on the good guys. And we keep cheering on the good guys: our children, our brothers and sisters, our neighbors, our friends from high school....yet are shocked beyond belief when we get a letter from the government, a mass-produced, hackneyed, Hallmark-sentimental collection of words essentially saying: "Sorry, it wasn't as safe as we thought. Johnny/Jane's dead. Condolences."
Then the seed is planted. Is what we believed in, what we sent our loved ones to fight for, really worth the effort? When is enough enough? Many people sit back and smile as the administration brushes gays out of the picture. They chuckle as the administration delivers barbed statements directed at liberal straw men, and they chuckle even more as an increasingly dickless amount of the opposition's people refuse to stand behind equally barbed statements delivered by the only figurehead willing to say such things in retaliation. But even his words are hollow, to an extent.
They clap and cheer as the administration invokes God's name and essentially uses Christianity as a justification for this war, but not in so many words, you see. It's still a crusade, as the leader says. It's still a clash of ideals. McWorld against Jihad. It's one gigantic goddamned cluster-fuck of disinformation and blind support. But they don't want to actively come out and say it, despite all the evidence to the contrary. The pundits bellow and berate the opposition for their words, but refuse to actively do anything about it themselves short of shooting their mouths off. Xenophobia runs rampant, and racism is thinly veiled with a shitty excuse such as "They're a violent religion/culture/whatever.". Intolerance is welcomed, coddled, encouraged. Looking at the whole picture, I wouldn't be surprised if hanging Middle Easterners and burning the Qur'an became a daily routine for some people.
Welcome to the new patriotism: empty rhetoric packed with loaded words for each side.
Welcome to America.
This holiday should not be twisted to celebrate the current administration. This holiday should not be twisted to justify blatant flag-waving and "liberal" bashing. This holiday should not be twisted to combine politics and religion into a volatile cocktail of partisan bullshit. This holiday should not be used as an excuse to get piss drunk, scream "GAWD BLESS AMURIKA", and throw up all over your living room rug before passing out face-down in a dirty litterbox.
But it will be.
Patriotism is subjective. You can ask several different people from vastly different walks of life, and chances are you'll get 3 differing definitions out of five people (if not more). Chances are that a couple of these definitions will make you nauseous. They might give you hope. They might insult the French.
But what they will not do is serve as justification for a fucked-up partisan agenda.
Patriotism isn't limited to a single administration. Patriotism is NOT cowering behind pro-Iraq rhetoric while refusing to serve the war you so rabidly support. Patriotism isn't letting crooks creep in and steal your standards of living out from under your nose under a cheap, weak facade of morals and religious kinship. And patriotism is not undermining the words and ideas of our founding fathers because you live under the delusion that the current administration has your best interests in mind.
The United States of America were founded on dissent. A break from tradition. The capitulating feeling of "We're not going to take this shit anymore" echoed in the sentiments of thousands of Brits, tired of the seemingly unfair rulings of the monarchy. After all we had fought for, the signature of the Declaration of Independence was a benchmark in American history. Not only a declaration of independence, but a declaration of intent. No more would we suffer the burden of unfair ruling, we would mold and shape a government according to the ideals of the men and women involved. Men and women who made it a point to risk their lives, traverse the Atlantic Ocean, and start life anew on a seemingly untamed continent. They were willing to do whatever it took to salvage their standards of living and to stand up for their beliefs, their inalienable rights as a human being.
Fast forward to now. Many of us could use that sort of tenacity nowadays. Many of us have become complacent under an administration that hurls insults at us. Not only insults to what should be the collective understanding of common sense and personal integrity, but insults to us as we stand, the people, collected, under the flag. We're handed pure lies and told that they're the truth. Many give their lives or the lives of their loved ones to go fight for their country, a simple ideological concept that used to have some dignity. Used to have some meaning. People blame either party for the decline of military morale, but honestly: it's not a partisan issue unless you're looking at the government that backs such wars.
World War II was the last hurrah of true blue-blooded patriotism, war with a reason, a collective iron fist smashing through one of the most tumultuous times in global history. We worked together with other countries in a group effort that spanned the globe in order to quash a threat that was very real and very dangerous.
And now, we have nothing. We fight to scrape up recruits from wherever we can. The deficit is disgustingly bloated, like a distended cancer leeching off of the shadow of what used to be a respectably strong economy. An isolationist policy enacted by a dangerously stubborn administration has gleefully shoved away all support from other nations and gambled away our future on a pack of lies.
And still we keep our mouths shut. Still we obey when told to raise our flags and keep cheering on the good guys. And we keep cheering on the good guys: our children, our brothers and sisters, our neighbors, our friends from high school....yet are shocked beyond belief when we get a letter from the government, a mass-produced, hackneyed, Hallmark-sentimental collection of words essentially saying: "Sorry, it wasn't as safe as we thought. Johnny/Jane's dead. Condolences."
Then the seed is planted. Is what we believed in, what we sent our loved ones to fight for, really worth the effort? When is enough enough? Many people sit back and smile as the administration brushes gays out of the picture. They chuckle as the administration delivers barbed statements directed at liberal straw men, and they chuckle even more as an increasingly dickless amount of the opposition's people refuse to stand behind equally barbed statements delivered by the only figurehead willing to say such things in retaliation. But even his words are hollow, to an extent.
They clap and cheer as the administration invokes God's name and essentially uses Christianity as a justification for this war, but not in so many words, you see. It's still a crusade, as the leader says. It's still a clash of ideals. McWorld against Jihad. It's one gigantic goddamned cluster-fuck of disinformation and blind support. But they don't want to actively come out and say it, despite all the evidence to the contrary. The pundits bellow and berate the opposition for their words, but refuse to actively do anything about it themselves short of shooting their mouths off. Xenophobia runs rampant, and racism is thinly veiled with a shitty excuse such as "They're a violent religion/culture/whatever.". Intolerance is welcomed, coddled, encouraged. Looking at the whole picture, I wouldn't be surprised if hanging Middle Easterners and burning the Qur'an became a daily routine for some people.
Welcome to the new patriotism: empty rhetoric packed with loaded words for each side.
Welcome to America.