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Posts Tagged ‘America’

fourth of july

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , on July 4, 2025| 1 Comment »

States and Nations don’t exist as such. There are only people. Sets of people living in certain areas, having certain allegiances. Nations won’t change their national policies unless and until people change their private policies. All governments, even Hitler’s, even Stalin’s, even Mussolini’s, are representative. To-day’s national behaviour — large-scale projection of today’s individual behaviour. Or rather, to be more accurate, a large-scale projection of the individual’s secret wishes and intentions. For we should all like to behave a good deal worse than our conscience and respect for public opinion allow. One of the great attractions of patriotism — it fulfils our worst wishes. In the person of our nation we are able, vicariously, to bully and cheat. Bully and cheat, what ’s more, with a feeling that we ’re profoundly virtuous. Sweet and decorous to murder, lie, torture for the sake of the fatherland.

–Aldous Huxley, The Diary of Anthony Beavis / Eyeless in Gaza (1936)

Fourth of July 2025.

There you go– that’s my acknowledgement of the day. No parade. No blindly patriotic songs playing. No fireworks. No flag waving.

The flags above are from a big box of old damaged and dirty flags I have picked up at our local cemetery over the decades. I have hundreds of these old cheap flags. I don’t know why but I do. I think they say more than the grandest giant flag billowing over a car dealership or in some saccharine AI photo with purple  mountains majesty above the fruited plain.

Maybe that’s just me.

Okay. I am getting out of here quickly today before I say something I might regret. Here’s a song that I think says more about this country than the most chest pounding, flag waving, patriotic nonsense. It is about the hope that we maintain for a better life as well about the way that hopes are quashed. It is both sad and gloriously hopeful. What can be more American than that? This Tracy Chapman and her Fast Car for this fourth of july.

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All Gone to Look For America

Posted in Favorite Things, Music, Opinion, Video, tagged , , , , on July 4, 2013| 2 Comments »

Fourth of July Parade of ScoutsAnother Fourth of July.

Parades.  Picnics. Fireworks. Red, white and blue.  That’s the shorthand version of this day.  The actual meaning of this day is much harder to capture, probably more so for Americans than for those from other countries who view us from a distance.  I think we sometimes lose sight of the idea and ideal of America in our day to day struggle to maintain our own lives.  But even that struggle is symptomatic of the basis of our nation, reminding us that anything worth preserving requires work and maintenance.

For me,  America is not a static ideal, a credo written in granite that will always be there.  It is vaporous and ever changing, like a dense fog.  But it is an inviting fog, one that is warm on the skin and invites you in with hazy promises of possibility.  And maybe all America is– possibility.

Maybe it is the sheer potential of a better and safer life, the possibility of remaking one’s self, that defines our ideal America.  We are at our best when we are open and inviting,  offering our possibility and empathy to all .  We are a long way from our ideal when we close our doors and try to capture the vapor  that is  America all for ourselves.  It is not ours to hold– we are simply caretakers of an ideal, one that brought most of our ancestors here.

Maybe this doesn’t make any sense.  Since it is such a hazy ideal, we all see it in different ways.  This is just how I see it.

Here’s a video of the song America from Simon and Garfunkel, as performed by David Bowie during the Concert For New York City in the aftermath of 9/11.  This is not a flag waving , chest thumping anthem but it speaks as much to the ideal of  the American ideal in that simple chorus — all gone to look for America— as the very best Sousa march.

Have a great Fourth!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcRsyl9-5mg

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What a Time It Is

Posted in Favorite Things, Influences, tagged , on October 9, 2008| Leave a Comment »

 What a world…

Stock markets crashing, bitter vitriol and the worst part of our American soul comes forward in ignorance and intolerance.  My blood pressure rises and I need to be reminded of the common bonds and ideals that trump hatred and anger and make us proud to call America our home.  Help me out, Uncle Walt…

 

America

 

Centre of equal daughters, equal sons,
All, all alike endear'd, grown, ungrown, young or old,
Strong, ample, fair, enduring, capable, rich,
Perennial with the Earth, with Freedom, Law and Love,
A grand, sane, towering, seated Mother,
Chair'd in the adamant of Time.
           ---- Walt Whitman

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