While the Fourth of July retains its fun, steeped in family and community traditions, the actual occasion it marks has become increasingly mournful. Each year, the pretense of celebrating independence becomes more ironic than the last.
This year, Independence Day arrives in the wake of an international debate over the Brexit. A perusal of media finds no end of hand-wringing over the decentralization of authority. God forbid people take control over their own affairs in defiance of an unaccountable bureaucracy. But hey, let’s go watch some fireworks.
This year, Independence Day arrives as a new poll shows that the vast majority of Americans want to do away with due process and strip law-abiding citizens of their constitutional rights. From Quinnipiac University:
People on the government’s terrorist watch list should not be allowed by purchase guns, American voters say 86 – 12 percent, including 83 – 14 percent among voters in households where there is a gun, according to a Quinnipiac University National poll released today.
The watch list has names placed on it with no clear process for dispute or appeal. People know this. They just don’t care. But hey, let’s go have a barbecue.
This year, Independence Day arrives in the midst of a presidential election in which the presumptive nominees of both major parties agree that power should be arbitrarily and absolute. They differ only in whom they would victimize with that power, and what constituencies they would buy off with the plunder. But hey, let’s sing an anthem about a battle our generation would never actually fight.
Independence Day has become a morbid joke. At this rate, it won’t again have meaning to our culture until the dawn of a new revolution.
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