Smile, It's Tuesday

Happy 4th of July...weekend, it's just now July 2nd where I am so I feel a bit premature about yelling "happy 4th of July!" when we're not even there yet. Go figure, I'm a stickler for waiting until the appropriate moment to celebrate our nation's founding.

Well, scratch that: the lamestream media's officially-sanctioned version of events that led to our nation's founding. You know how they distort things, making it sound like we forgot to do anything about abolishing slavery right off the bat, or kept Chinamen from coming over until we needed railroads and were too lazy to build them ourselves. You know, that sort of thing.

American history, when you're an idealistic kid, is a very different animal from what you learn as you get older (assuming you learn anything, what with the condition of American education). When you're a kid, all those guys on the poster that goes around the wall, the dead white guys who are recognizable because some of them are on the money that you have for lunch that day, they seem like nice guys. A little hard to gauge in terms of how much they like to party, but you're guessing that Lincoln would do the Electric Slide while Teddy Roosevelt shot a bear just for the hell of it, and Franklin Pierce would be doing jello shots off Rutherford B. Hayes' facial hair. Maybe you didn't think of such things when you were a kid, and I can't say that I did either. But for the most part, you knew the basic facts about America, and were content.

Then, say, you read about the whole Indian forced-resettlement thing (basically pushing them to the Pacific, until we decided that we wanted that too), everything to do with being black in America (at the lib I used to work at, there was a series of books called "You Wouldn't Want to Be A..." with some historical context, usually like a "Titanic passenger" or "Jamestown colonist." I once suggested "You Wouldn't Want to Be a Black Person in America 1619-1955 or So"), Jewish, Irish, any other kind of "-ish," and sharecropping. A lot of bad shit has gone down under the banner of the Stars and Stripes, people.

But I think that's a good thing, in a way. We're the most powerful nation on earth (well, except for the Chinese), and we're looked up to (well, except for the time that ex-cheerleader was in charge). We have made amends somewhat for some of that bad shit, but we could do more. But I think we'll get there.

We don't need the idealized version of history, the one that says nothing bad ever happened and if it did, it was the pinko liberal homo Commies' fault. We need an honest appraisal of where we've been, what we've done, and what we got right. So this 4th of July, take some time to appreciate the real America, the one that shows up at your barbecue three sheets to the wind and intolerant of the Irish. Because as fucked-up as this America is, he's got some redeeming qualities. He never molested you, right?

Happy Independence Day, bitches!!!