4 July 2024
I’ve always loved the 4th of July. Growing up in the Bible Belt of the USA, there was always a strong patriotic showing. Parades, picnics and tailgating in the town center, some sort of live music performance, then at long last the local amateur orchestra would play a suite of American War Tunes as fireworks screamed into the air.
As a kid and young adult, the cocktail of hot southern sun, cold soda/beer in an igloo cooler, and burgers sizzling on a charcoal grill off used to be something I would savour every year. No school. No work. Just friends gathered together and celebrating our American legacy.
Even when I moved to the UK, I would still take the day off and invite some friends around by poking fun at them for losing the war… “We couldn’t be bothered…” often began the retort.
This year the day seems to hit different. Living now in the UK for nearly a decade, the America I knew is an ocean away – but somehow it feels even farther.
My family text chat is filling with plans to get together. “Mom… did you grab the..” and “Rebecca are you doing potato salad??” The tradition appears intact but the notion of the American States being United now to me seems like a ruse.
Perhaps it was always a ruse. How could a country built on the backs of slave labor ever have been a true beacon of freedom and democracy?
The America of my youth was a land of innovators and progress. Business was booming. American pop culture spread across the globe. Soviet Communism seemed to shrink at the sight of American Capitalism. We kicked ass at the Olympics every four years. We had the best universities, hospitals, jobs, cheeseburgers, Tom Cruise, blah blah blah.
All along though, the injustice of our systems and our dark history of oppression was baked into our success. With each American generation, poor people have became poorer, minorities have been scapegoated and isolated from the levers of power and influence, and the elite have seized more than their fair share of opportunity to become entrenched as an untouchable new ruling class.
Americana are at a new inflection point, undecided about how to proceed. Our politics are polarised. Our people are disenfranchised. Groceries keep getting more expensive and eccentric billionaires are making the rules.
Shit man. It’s bad. But by these metrics it’s bad just about everywhere.
My friends in the UK are ready for a change in leadership and are most likely going to reflect that today at the polls, the US is busy deciding the answers to some foundational questions about it’s future, people in Ukraine and Gaza are killing and being killed in staggering numbers… to the common man like me it all seems like too much.
But we do. In the face of this kind of stress and uncertainty, we humans create and innovate. We paint pictures, write songs and poems, and have ideas.
Then we rally around the best of these finding a new way forward – together as a group. In theory that’s exactly what John Hancock and company we’re doing back in 1776, so maybe that’s worth celebrating.
Maybe the best thing to do right now is crack a beer and fire up a grill. Invite some friends round.… maybe sing some songs… sound good?
I’ll pass on the fireworks and patriotic medley though.
So, on whichever side of the aisle or the ocean you find yourself, won’t you raise a beer with me to a better future.
(Shoot me a picture on WhatsApp if you do! +447908370844)
Happy 4th Y’all!
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