on the fourth
sans fireworks
I have always had a love/loathe relationship with this country. Over the seventy years of my life Nixon, Reagan, Bush, Trump and now more Trump, these men, these white rich men conjure the sentiments that have caused me to loathe the “American Way”. As a young man I served this country as a Marine during the end of the Vietnam War not because I believed in the war but because of my naïveté. I am no longer young nor quite as ignorant. The history of this country is a saga riddled with atrocities, brutalities, aspirations and ideals.
I believe on this day we are ceding the beacon of our quest for a more perfect union to the yoke of the capitalist cause, the TV con, the jackal braying, the tarred and feathered prayers of Christians bloated with greed, the masculine poseurs, and to the witless ones who fetishize and revere their anointed savior with a blood thirsty lust for all they believe makes our country great. So yes, gather round ye boys, raise the flag once more for one nation under the thumb with liberty and justice only for some, but I will not be celebrating for you or with you.
On the fourth, I will lament the passing of the America i dreamt of. Symbolic. Blue endless skies of possibility, the hand that reaches out, the comforting embrace, the welcoming eyes and the memory of those who have lifted, protected and defend.
On the fifth, I shall resume in the small ways I can, to protest ignorance and violence and to honor the freedoms that I have been graced with. As Emma Lazarus wrote in her remarkable poem The New Colossus, “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to be free,”
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