Independence? How We Yearn For The Real Thing

He's going to embarrass us only if we let him.

You know what's going to happen. He's going to use our birthday to vilify critics, especially the press; attack the Democrats, especially those running for president; and brag about all he's done, especially to say what 'he alone could only fix,' to paraphrase one of dozens of ridiculous campaign slogans.

He's going to point out the 'Sherman tanks' (a common name he's brought over from the '50s, kind of like 'Xerox machine,' as if that's the only type that's ever existed but you know what he means, right? So it doesn't matter, does it? you think as you shrug, which is what he wants you to do instead of getting him to specify something he knows nothing about, nor does he have to) and tell you about the largest military budget and collection of hardware ever assembled in our history.

That, to him, is what will sell the faithful on what America means, to the world and to ourselves. He will have the financially faithful surrounding him as he does so.

Whether they agree or not, whether they need to cover their faces while he drones on (sorry for the pun), they will be there because, for this one less-than-shining moment, they'll be connected with the biggest of big shots. They will be proud. They will be crazy with prestige. Some of them will actually salute the flag instead of just putting their hands over their hearts. They believe in America soooooo much.

Except they believe in their money far more. They believe in a political system that allows them to organize into now unassailable Congressional districts, control over which will guarantee that they will be able to hoard every last dime, far beyond what anyone could ever need, because every legislative effort to make the tax system fairer will be blocked and jettisoned. Opulent luxury builds paranoia and the propaganda which even convinces themselves that they'll always be passing some of it, though never quite enough of it, down (be sure of that direction) to those who toil to keep them opulent.

The only way this will not be true would be to turn both houses of Congress and the presidency Democrat. The only way. And that will be for the federal government only.

In the meantime, this fat blowhard will say outrageous things that would be hilarious if we weren't living here to have to put up with them. He will tell how he'll finally be able to get citizenship status on the census rolls, even though the Supreme Court has rejected that notion very recently. He thinks there's a way to convince it that it needs to tell a federal judge to make an order to restart the process. This was done on July 3, so while the Court's taking the 4th off, he will have the opportunity to try to bully the Court into doing so by trying to embarrass it (not a coincidence, not a bit). Here's hoping John Roberts meant what he said when he told the government's lawyer that its position was "contrived (read: BS)."

Beyond that, he will gush with superlatives that mean nothing--a great drinking game would be to sip when he does so; you'd be smashed in half an hour--that are misleading at the least and lies at the worst, putting the fact-checkers back to work, pushing the total number of publicly uttered mistruths toward the 11,000 mark.

You could watch all this happen because I anticipate that at least Fox News will televise it live (I don't know what the other networks are planning, but they're probably as trapped into doing so because of his position). [Author's note: This was originally written before the major networks and MSNBC announced that they wouldn't be televising this. Good for them.] Or you could enjoy what the Fourth actually means, except we are now yearning for a different kind of independence.

We, the loyal majority in opposition, wish and will work to be free from this horrible distortion of reality, from policy by the seat of the pants, from the ugliness of how we now look to the rest of humanity, from the disgust of how we are treating some of its members and must watch as the doors are just as cruelly closed to those who wish to rescue them from the overt racism that brands it all as a rancher brands cattle--painfully, horribly, and finally, ignoring their cries of agony, thinking that they'll get over it as they crowd together, frightened in waiting for something they can't imagine except they know it isn't going to be good.

This, amazingly, sadly, is my America, 243 years on. It's yours, too. You don't have to like it, either. I certainly do not celebrate this. I use Independence Day to point it out.

For I want independence from this. I want to be freed from this penumbra of oppression that now envelops our land. I'm not free as long as they aren't, either. Nor you.

I'll catch up on the horrible speech later. I want to know exactly what he said. Always gives me plenty to write about, as if I needed anything new from this freewheeling windbag of garbage.

But I won't watch it live. I won't give him that pleasure. He doesn't deserve it. Neither do those who have been invited. It's their oppression, too, because they support it as much as they do him.

Their attempts to gloss over the issue with politics is getting a bit old now (I'm looking at you, Jim Sensenbrenner). They wear what has happened. They can't just shrug it off. It's up to us to keep them from doing so.

Happy Fourth of July, everybody. Make it a thoughtful one. May we all have independence that's meaningful, independence that really matters. The real thing.

Be well. I'll see you down the road.


Mister Mark