I think getting on kittenblue’s case for forgetting the meaning of holiday is fucking stupid. What were you dong on the 4th to celebrate PunditLisa? I want to know how a real patriot celebrates the 4th of July.
I hope that your day included something like the recitation of the DoI, maybe reading a bit of a history book out loud–perhaps taking a moment to reflect on the great men who wrote the DoI and shaped the Constituion–watched an appropriately education and themed film like 1776, went to a cemetery and decorated a grave or two, visited a vetran and brought them food or read to them or just asked them about their lifes and memories, write a letter to somebody serving overseas–or better yet send a care package…surely you did something noble and uplifting and inline with the reason for the holiday, right?
I will be sorely disappointed if you ate so much a hotdog or got caught in the trappings of what the 4th means to everybody else. I’m sure you wouldn’t bust into a thread talking about how popular it is to bash America or anything as ridiculous as that otherwise.
I will admit that PunditLisa did go a little overboard with her answer to an obviously emotional post, but I don’t think it means she’s not showing any “damn compassion.”
I think reminding her what the day is about hardly makes Lisa a heartless person. After all, we’re not talking about kittenblue being heartsick over the death of a loved one, or her house burning down, or her dog being shot. It boils down to something a 15 year old girl might say “I didn’t have a date for the fireworks.”
Although I feel kittenblue because I hate the thought of anyone being sad and lonely, I don’t think PunditLisa was THAT offbase in offering a different point of view regarding appreciation for what you DO have.
Most holidays are idiotic, meaningless concoctions of the greeting card, flower and candy industries, designed to empty your wallet and load you up with a bunch of emotional baggage. The 4th isn’t one of them.
Ignore any and all holidays that require you to exchange gifts, cards, and other stupid sentiments that you should be exchanging throughout the year. Call your mother, kiss your sweetheart, talk to your father, observe your religion all on a regular basis and you will soon be free of these odious events and they will cease to own you.
We’ll have to agree to disagree, threemae. I don’t think love of country is all that one-size-fits-all. In fact few things make me much more uncomfortable than “patriotism police” piously passing judgment on how other people should think, feel and act. If this country’s about anything, it’s about the innate worth, potential and dignity of the individual. If you can’t read the Declaration of Independence without applying its core principles to other people, right now, you’ve misplaced the actual grandeur. IMO.
There are no “unimportant little personal lives.” There are citizens, people, all of whom endowed with the absolute right to express their love of country, or anything else, filtered through their own experiences. Nobody on the outside has the right to get pissy about what’s really real, honorable or heartfelt. Nobody–you, me nor anybody else–can possibly judge what’s going through somebody else’s mind or heart, even while eating picnic food in the company of others.
I’m getting pretty scared, sad and disgusted with the trend toward judging others ruthlessly by arbitrary, wholly artifical standards of outward “patriotism”. The ultimate auto-pilot for this country is to stop respecting individual rights to feel, think and act differently. That’s profoundly unAmerican.
I am not an American, but IMHO the Founding Fathers would feel more proud and honoured by kittenblue’s earnest wish to enjoy her 4th of July, than they would by your heavy-handed and oppressive attempt to make her follow your lead.
Independence Day is about… Independence, isn’t it?
Yeah, I get the sideways glances as well when I reply to the inevitable “Whatcha gettin’ the wife for xmas?” question with “We don’t exchange gifts on holidays.” I get additional rolleyes when I try to explain that it’s more meaningful for both of us to know that the other bought something just because he/she happened to be thinking of us, not because it’s required by Hallmark. Or some convoluted grammar structure like that.
If we are going to pick nits, the Declaration of Independence as the document we know today, did not exist on July 4, 1776. It would be several weeks before the engrossed copy was ready for signing in August. John Hancock and Charles Thompson attested to the words approved on July 4, and John Dunlap printed several copies overnight. Signing the engrossed copy did not start until August 2.
Perhaps my post came off to strong about the fireworks and BBQ. There’s nothing wrong with them at all. Again, its good that people simply get some time to spend with family and a little bit of rest. I know that I sure appreciated getting monday off, I just finished up with O-Chem 1 and start O-Chem 2 tomorrow. But we shouldn’t lose sight of the broader and more important reasons for the holiday.
Thinking that a family is considering if they should view the footage of what is supposed to be their son being decapitated simply put things into perspective for me, and another poster put it well saying that this rant really did just boil down to not having a date for the fireworks. On the 4th of July. It wasn’t prom, or valentines day, just a day where we’re supposed to give a lot of thought to our nation.
I really hope that I am not the, “Patriotism Police;” I certainly don’t think I am. I didn’t put up any flags, nor make it to any barbecues, or blow anything up. But I certainly spent a little thought on the meaning of freedom, and all that I’m asking is that people should do the same.
I don’t claim to have a one-size-fits-all answer to “patriotism,” but I have thought a lot about Iraq, the “War on Terror”, the people and citizens languishing without trial in Guantanmo, our soldiers overseas far from their families, and our freedom. It’s good that people have the ability to completely blow off any sense of civic responsibility or involvement, but I don’t think that they should. I’m simply saying that we are in an important time, and with voter turn out as low as it is, it might be good if people took a small part of their 4th of July to think about politics and our nation.
That said, I am sorry that kittenblue’s weekend didn’t go better than it did, and hopefully her next one will be much better in all of the social aspects that didn’t go well with this one.
And I can heartily agree with you there, threemae. FWIW I’m concerned lest people become more enthralled with the easy outward symbols of freedom rather than the messy, confusing obligations it entails. (This communicating by print can be so…imprecise at times!)
I was just dismayed that kittenblue’s thread about her particular situation not be extrapolated into requirements for How To Observe The Fourth, with judgments about her relative (outward and explicity expressed) patriotism. Being lonely over a holiday isn’t facile or empty, that’s all.
Gad, I’ve read way too many febrile threads about politics, and it’s caused a very reluctant twitchiness. I’m very, very tired of knee-jerk absolutists of any stripe.*
Sigh.
Veb
Not that you are one, threemae, but they seem to be multiplying.
It doesn’t. What it does, however, is negate some of the statements you present as fact, i.e. “many of them were hanged” for signing the DoI. You want to point to the courage of those 56 men in contrast to the courage of the thousands who actually got down in the mud and did the fighting to back up those words, and who lost their lives and their fortunes doing so, you go right ahead. But don’t make up stories out of whole cloth.
I exercise my right to free speech by speaking out against what I perceive to be wrong with this country (the war in Iraq and all its attendant atrocities, and the Federal Marriage Amendment, to name a couple) and what I think needs to change. I exercise my freedom of action by trying to organize people who agree with me on those issues and working to do something about it. I do this 365 days a year - why should the 4th of July be any different? Or is it more patriotic to remain silent on the nation’s “birthday”?
For the record, some of those men did get down in the mud and fight. Wars then were not like they are now, with Generals and politicians playing video games at the Pentagon while men die in the field thousands of miles away.
You know something? As much as I disagree with Olentzero’s politics, nonetheless he is a patriot who lovews his nation and expends his time, energy, asnd money trying to make it better. He is politically involved at some cost to his safety here in DC, putting his body where his mouth is, and for that he deserves our admiration.
Wow, take a day off from the Dope and what happens? My Rant gets turned into a patriotic mudfight.
In case it slipped past you, there was a point in there where I mentioned living on a military base. After 12 years as an Army family, I think we have notched up the patriotism points. I get choked up at the thought of all the men and women who have died to make my home safe and free. I sing the Star-Spangled Banner. And I weep on Memorial Day. You want to hear me recite lines from “I Am The Infantry”? Can do.
If anything, my patriotism shouldn’t be an issue. And as for whining about “not having a man”? I’ve been single for nearly ten years. I don’t go to bars and pick up guys just because I “can’t be alone”. I have spent enough time and thought on the subject to know that while I could live a very full life not being in a relationship with a man, it would still be lovely to have one. Men are smart and useful, and amusing, and great fun, and they come with their own wonderful attachments, and if I want to miss being part of a team, then damn it, I have a right to miss that. It doesn’t make my singleness any less valuable, nor does it make anyone else’s single state sad.
Look…Fourth of July is a special time where people from all over the world celebrate the birth of America. It is when we Americans celebrate our freedom by doing what we do best. Blowing shit up!! There are plenty of other threads for you freakin hippies to take your anti America Michael Moore loving rants!!
That said… I have to say that the whole Memorial Day/4th of July weekends must be a thousand times worse than Valentines Day. Valentines Day, you can always go to a bar where all the other singles are weeping into their beers and find a little lovin. But if you have just moved into a strange city, don’t know anyone, and everyone in the world is at family BarBQs and summer shares, you are in for a long weekend of roaming around an empty city like the freakin Omega Man.
Let me just say that having a father who was sick with cancer on the 4th, died on the 6th and having been arrested the following 4th of July while celebrating the birth of our nation and with our nation’s most recent poor behavior, fuck the 4th. It’s just not my favorite holiday and I don’t care for it. The 4th has so much baggage surrounding it, and we currently, IMO, don’t deserve to celebrate it as if we are the greatest nation in the world.
So pardon me Lisa Et. al if your patriotism and sanctimoniousness isn’t exactly infectious.