Image by Jamie Fenn.

It seems that greater US involvement in an overseas war has been avoided for now, with some ceasefire between Iran and Israel.  That’s something to celebrate, I suppose. Israel got spanked badly enough by the Iranian response, it decided to stick to killing Palestinians waiting for food aid and to continue violating Lebanese and Syrian sovereignty with its bombing raids.  If I were Iran, I wouldn’t relax my guard when it came to Israel or the United States, though.  Both governments are about as trustworthy as a narcotics addict low on cash and craving a fix.  Both are addicted to war, and both are unwilling to enter rehab, their existence dependent on the money and blood that war requires and the power it appears to be. Now, though, without a big war, the attention returns to the land of the free on its “independence” day.  Let the grilling begin, as the beer and hard seltzers flow, while the Fourteenth Amendment is canceled, and the rich get richer, and Medicaid gets cut.

Take me out to the ballgame and let me be a Yankee Doodle dandy. Lock up the immigrants and put the nation on ICE.  I remember a Fourth of July a few months after the US had barbecued thousands of Iraqis fleeing US-caused devastation on the so-called highway of death. It was in Olympia, Washington, when a couple of friends took over the stage at a star-spangled celebration by the lake downtown and set an American flag on fire.  That stirred shit up.  My friends ran like hell while the ten-gallon hat emcee swept the ashes of the flag from the stage.  They got away, unlike the Iraqis fleeing the death machines of the US military earlier that year. One nation under the gods of war, one nation under the hydrogen bomb, one nation under the bunker buster, the mother of all bombs. Edward Teller and Herman Kahn, technocrats of mass murder in the name of nation and science, would be extremely proud. I find no beauty in the instruments of war, but all too many humans worship them as if they are humankind’s most spectacular achievement.

Considerably less spectacular but celebrated just the same are the mechanisms of the capitalist economy. It doesn’t matter what its champions tell you, the facts prove that it’s an economy designed to make those already holding wealth gain even more wealth. The simple reality of this is that others become poorer. I mean, all those homeless folks didn’t just quit their jobs and lose their living spaces. In fact, latest figures estimate that between forty and sixty percent of the people in the US without housing are employed. Meanwhile, around fifteen percent of the houses in the US are empty, many if not most of them waiting for someone to buy them for more than they’re worth. I’m continually surprised that squatting isn’t more popular than it is. The US economy rewards greed at the top and punishes those who struggle to survive while adding to the latter’s numbers with increasing frequency. I’ve been told all my life that it’s the best system there is, even by politicians who say they’re on my side.

Then there’s the con. The con is an all-time favorite of the US settler nation. It goes well with whiskey and guns, fast horses and fast cars, marked playing cards and presidential election campaigns. One thing I can say about Donald Trump is that he’s figured this out. When his con falters, he allies himself with bullies, breaks into his bluster, talks shit and arrests immigrants while bad mouthing liberals and leftists. His audience, which is necessary for the con to work, laps it up like a thirsty dog drinking water from a polluted stream. Caught up in the immediate gratification the water provides, only a few realize why they have a stomachache a couple of hours later and most of them won’t admit their mistake not wanting to appear stupid enough to fall for the con. Just when they feel better and just like that, thirsty dog, the next con comes along. PT Barnum said a sucker was born every minute. He was right and the proof is in Congress, where a few hundred suckers pretend they’re the ones in control. In other words, they think they’re running the con when in fact they’re being conned just like most of the rest of us. Raise your Budweiser to that this Fourth of July. Aim that bottle rocket at the party of your choice and watch while they screw you once again in the name of the flag and the slaver George Washington.

What is it that makes America great? What is it you celebrate? Is it the daily closing of the stock exchange or the opening bell? Is it the biggest war budget in the world, or the ICE Gestapo kidnapping brown people because their papers might not be in order? Is it the Supreme Court giving the Gestapo permission to send those they take from their families and homes to countries they have no connection to? That’s what the nazis did when they shipped the Romany, the Jews and the commies to Poland. Does the taste of a Big Mac and fries make you proud to be a citizen of the USA? Is it your local police keeping the riffraff out of your sight? Is it the National Football League or the NBA? Is it Ronnie Reagan or Donald Trump? Jimmy Carter or Barack Obama? Is it the public library they closed or the books the Moms for Liberty want to ban in the library that’s still open? Is your America great because your car payments are only $300 a month, and the price of eggs has gone down to $4.50 a dozen? Or is it great because the liquor store and the cannabis store are on the same block, making for easy holiday shopping? Even though your residency is mostly happenstance, why do you celebrate one nation under Moloch and the other gods of war, conceived in white supremacy, without justice or liberty for all? Maybe it’s the amber waves of grain or that ribbon of highway, that endless skyway? Or maybe it’s the fact that the government wants to sell even more public lands to the energy and logging industries because this land was made for them, not you and me?

Wave that flag. Jump up and down in your red, white, and blue suede shoes from sea to shining sea. Nat Turner died for our sins, and so did John Brown. In 2025, I wonder if their sacrifice was a waste of their time.

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