Tag: 4th of July

This One Is Ours

July 4, 2026

In February, I watched our US women’s hockey team win gold over Canada in the Winter Olympics in Milan. (I might have had this post open on my phone for good luck.) We were down 1-0 for most of the game and then got a late score to tie and send it into sudden death overtime, where we scored again and won it all. Yay!

Three days later, our usually-useless men’s team did the exact same thing, also against Canada, also down 1-0 most of the game before tying it near the end, and scoring in sudden death overtime for the gold.

There was so much fanfare, so much celebration and gushing about history being made, about it having been 46 years since we last won hockey gold, despite the fact that it had actually been three days. But I digress.

They raised our flag and played The Star Spangled Banner. Because these victories, and those of Alysa Liu and our other amazing gold medalists, were for us as Americans. Representing us. Emboldening us. Making us proud.

And currently we’re co-hosting the World Cup. People are visiting our country for the event and getting excited about ranch dressing. Those are our own cities (and Canada’s and Mexico’s, of course) holding these wild matches. Certainly a more special celebration of our 250th than whatever sparsely attended nonsense the Orange Thing is planning. I guess this event passing through two of the three co-host nations’ national days was a coincidence, but, hey, it works out. We’ve invited everyone over for this big ass weeks-long party!

(In a time of being extra hostile to visitors, though the case may be.)

Getting the real measure of a country requires seeing others. That’s not a competition. Every country is special and has their own uniqueness and quirks and all that Mr. Rogers jazz. The best thing about watching the World Cup is seeing the fans in the stands, with the over the top (and often stereotypical) symbols of their respective countries, whether the Australians with the giant inflatable yellow kangaroo or our own US fans dressing up as Uncle Sam, the Statue of Liberty, or a bald eagle. But we’re all much more complicated than that. One of the simplest joys in the far too few times I’ve traveled outside the country has been just noticing the little things that are different, the different products available at a convenience store, what the road signs look like, the manners of speaking that might be confusing at first, etc. And in doing this, you find things about your own country that are unique that you maybe never thought much about before.

All countries have gorgeous landscapes, but Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon and the Appalachian Trail are our gorgeous landscapes!

All countries have their favorite creatures, and ours is this majestic friend.

All countries have their many delicious foods. And so do we, with even more differences as you move around the states.

All countries have their long complicated histories, and we have ours in so many disparate stories.

There’s no hard and fast context-free definition of an American (or a national of any other country for that matter) that would satisfy everyone. Certainly people try. We just came dangerously close to simply being born here not being enough anymore, from a judicial standpoint anyway. We have a toxic administration still that, God willing, we can take some of the venom out after the midterms. But all that has nothing to do with it.

Our national teams aren’t competing for the Orange Thing. They’re competing for us. They’re competing, well, to make bank off endorsements, sure. But they give us something to get excited about connected to our national identity, however trivial that may ultimately be.

Whatever that national identity might entail, if anything more specific than simply thinking of the United States of America as home.

Maybe descended from people who were here at the time of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Maybe descended from those enslaved by them. Maybe descended from those displaced by them. Maybe descended from those in areas that weren’t within our borders at the time but are now. Maybe descended from or are those who arrived much later. Maybe a 250th anniversary means everything and nothing all at once. It’s a history that cannot be changed and a future that is still being created, with a present that is somehow both and neither, that at any given time is all that is real.

Maybe we just want to feel some pride and joy, and not everyone is going to get it from the same sources. We want to revel in our national teams’ successes as if they were our own, underneath the deep corruption of not only the governments but of FIFA and the IOC as well. We’re looking for simplicity in a universe that refuses it, and perhaps deny ourselves that joy and pride because of it.

I set out to write about our 250th based on some hockey and soccer joy this year, and here I am sitting with that complexity. Perhaps the most American thing I’ll do today.

Who Are We?

July 4, 2025

Don’t cede American identity to MAGA.

In the past few months of this administration, we’ve watched our institutions compromised and dismantled, our fellow residents abducted for being on the “wrong” side of an imaginary line, the programs relied on as the difference between life and death at home and abroad torn apart. They want the United States of America broken down and remade in their image, where those who don’t fit that image do not belong.

Don’t let them.

I’m American. The United States of America is where I am from, where I was born, where I live and work. Where I intend to stay. Sure, it’s an Evil Empire, built on white supremacy and slavery and indigenous genocide, etc. But it’s my home. To me and 360 million others.

The Orange Thing and his MAGA ilk don’t get to decide who does and does not count as “American”. Their racism, xenophobia, and all-around sadistic cruelty does not define us.

I said this already seven years ago, when I declared that “this is not who we are”. And I stand by it. But, yikes, given the current situation, it’s rather bittersweet now.

That was during the first term, attained through some electoral college fuckery despite popular vote loss. The will of the people prevailed in 2020 and the Orange Thing was out. Then he came back, with the popular vote win this time.

If this is not who we are, so many sure did choose it. We protest what’s happening as a defense of democracy, but, let’s be real here, a free and fair election got us here. It was less informed voters who carried him right back into the White House, probably going on name recognition and having gotten stuck listening to Fox News while in a waiting room. People we’ve been encouraging to cast their ballot, to make their voice heard, only for them to see what their vote has wrought. So why should they bother? How can democracy survive that, when our fellow voters are either actively choosing fascism or don’t even know what that word means and just wanted cheaper eggs or, God help us, believed his claims of being anti-war?

Maybe there’s some hope in a widespread “oh shit, we fucked up” among the electorate, that subsequent elections this year have shown a sharp turn away from the Orange Thing and his right wing goons. If it holds. If established officials don’t kneecap it with “opposition” candidates who don’t actually inspire anyone or promise any real positive change or correction to course while inhibiting those who do. Zohran Mamdani just demolished Andrew Cuomo in the New York City mayoral primary, so that’s delicious and promising. But even many elected officials in his same party who should be getting behind him have instead hesitated or outright blasted him with the exact racist and Islamophobic garbage you get from the Orange Thing and his MAGA dipshits. So maybe that’s who they are.

Maybe this is the true test of who we are. The Orange Thing has the Republican Party wrapped around his finger, and, it seems, plenty of Democrats haven’t shown to be much better or at all potent at countering it other than measly words wedged in a donation request text message. So regardless of how informed the voters may be, how informative the mainstream news, sometimes these are just the choices we’re stuck with: a Republican candidate whose mouth spends the better part of the day somewhere below the Orange Thing’s waist, or a Democrat who raises their fist in defiance while breathlessly assuring voters of agreement with the Republican candidate’s bigotries. Democrats like that got the nomination in the first place after dumping a truckload of money into the primary to wipe out any challengers, presenting themselves as the only sensible candidate as others are frozen out from getting their messages out there. This failed spectacularly for Andrew Cuomo. It must fail for all others like him. That is our test.

Our test before came in the 2018 midterms, which saw a major change in the balance of power but disappointing failures to do so in other areas, where voters should have known better given what was happening. It may be similar next year.

So who are we, that we elected these current leaders and all those before who set the stage for where we are now? They put ridiculous idiots on the Supreme Court, who then overturn Roe v Wade among a load of other bullshit decisions, all of which is shown to be wildly unpopular. Yet those who made it happen keep winning elections.

I guess I don’t have an answer for that, nothing beyond again pointing out we’re a big diverse country beyond the Orange Thing’s favored white conservatives. The people too many think of when they think of a “typical” American, erasing all the rest of us.

Maybe I just have more of what we aren’t. Our national identity is not defined by the White House occupant, whoever it is at any given time. Hell, maybe, for all the words spilled above, we aren’t our election results. We’re a few hundred million people who call these states and territories home. Who want to be seen and counted as part of this place.

United by the Constitution.

Emboldened by the Declaration of Independence.

We enter the 250th year under the greatest threat ever from within, with the desperate hope that this nation of the people, by the people, for the people, won’t soon perish from the earth.

These Truths the Self-Evident

July 4, 2024

On this night, our country sparkles.

On this day, 248 years ago…

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

Typical. Can’t just quit and be done with it. Got to write out a whole long thing first.

We hold these truths to be self-evident

“We hold these truths to be self-evident…” -Bart Simpson, tapping his head

that all men are created equal

#NotAllMen

that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights

Even the “creator” who kicked them out of a garden and drowned them in a flood? Or… a different one? Do the modern day so-called “originalists” know that?

that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

“This is totally a thing we believe in.” -the slaveowners who wrote and signed this thing

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men

Well, there’s your problem right there.

deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,

Were you saying something? I was just thinking about that debate the other night and about how our “consent” amounts to choosing between them this November.

That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

PSA: Your favorite orange racist loudmouth fairly losing his reelection bid does not amount to “destructive of these ends”. Quite the contrary, in fact.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

The devil you know…

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

You go girl!

Continue reading “These Truths the Self-Evident”

This Is Not Who We Are

July 4, 2018

On July 22, 2016, around the time of the Republican National Convention, I posted this to Facebook:

I spent my 4th of July evening on a plane flying home from across the country. When the sun was out, I saw craggy desert that gave way to the Rocky Mountains that became flat farmlands. When it got dark, far below me, blinking on and off all over like lots of multicolored fireflies, were the fireworks shows. From above, on its special night, I watched my country sparkle. And under the sparkling were the people, in all the various terrains within our borders, from all walks of life, enjoying a cozy summer evening and watching bright flashy colors across the sky, saying “ooh” and “ahh” and “oh, look, a plane”. Diverse yet with a common bond. That’s who we are. That’s what it means to be American.

Yet, we have a presidential candidate and the major political party behind him peddling paranoia, xenophobia, bigotry, greed, and violence. Worse still, these things are being touted as “American”, that these things are not only desirable but are part of our national identity, that they are what makes us “great”. And the thing is, as the primaries have shown us, this is resonating. Maybe it’s because so many, of any political persuasion, whether in support or against, really are buying the idea that this is what it means to be American.

So let’s maybe drop that idea already. It is a dangerous lie. Don’t lend it any credence. We’re a diverse land and people who value freedom and human rights and other nice stuff like that. And when some ultra-narcissistic loudmouth seeks the highest office in the land by supposedly speaking for us all when he promotes fear and hate and the ugly manifestations thereof, we have to say NO! SHUT THE FUCK UP AND SIT DOWN! THIS IS NOT WHO WE ARE!

The Orange Thing’s campaign seemed like a bad parody of white conservative American intolerance, from the longing for some imagined “great” past to the hostility toward Hispanic and Muslim immigrants, with the explicit notion that those white conservatives who have these beliefs are the only “real” Americans, that the rest of us either don’t exist or aren’t important or don’t belong in our own country. The rest of us make up the vast majority of the country, and surely, I and so many others thought, what he’s saying is so blatantly toxic and against everything we’re about.

But then, on the night of November 8, 2016, I reshared that post with the added comment:

THIS IS NOT WHO WE ARE!

*looks at electoral map*

…right?

The following January, a few hours after Orange Thing made it official in front of probably anyone, at a resistance event at WES, I read the above post in the open mic portion. In person, through a microphone, with my actual voice, to a room full of people, I recited: “…And when some ultra-narcissistic loudmouth seeks the highest office in the land by supposedly speaking for us all when he promotes fear and hate and the ugly manifestations thereof, we have to say NO! SHUT THE FUCK UP AND SIT DOWN! THIS IS NOT WHO WE ARE!” Followed by a round of applause.

It’s a year and a half later, and so so so much has happened, much of which I don’t even remember because it’s been one thing after another with this administration. There isn’t exactly anything great going on, that’s for sure.
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7 Incredibly Stupid Criticisms of the United States

July 4, 2014

The USA has a lot of problems. Dear sweet God, are there a lot of problems! And that’s just what we know about. There’s also problems and major flaws we don’t even know about, and others we just don’t know the extent. So many many flaws this country of ours has!

These are not among them…

“When are you going to switch to the metric system like the rest of the world?”

We’ll switch to the metric system (which we learned in school alongside imperial measurements, by the way) when the UK, Ireland, Japan, India, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand start driving on the correct side of the road “like the rest of the world”.

“The national anthem mentions war and bombs! It’s the only one in the world that does!”

First of all, do you think Canada is the only other country in the world with a national anthem? Because it’s not, and plenty of national anthems are pretty bloody and belligerent. Also, have you actually listened to the Star Spangled Banner? It’s about our flag not getting torn to shreds in a battle. It’s about surviving being attacked, not us doing the attacking.
Continue reading “7 Incredibly Stupid Criticisms of the United States”