This year’s Independence Day was strange, to say the least.
It was almost like many people—elites in the professional class of course—did not want it to happen. For days leading up to it, all I heard was that excessive heat should prevent us from going to celebrations. My own plans were ruined because the organizers canceled. Climate change, don’t you know. Hint, hint, nudge, nudge.
All the headlines were about blistering, dangerous, insufferable, astonishing, record-breaking heat, a blaze so dangerous that we dare not chance it. Hunker down. Don’t go out. Meanwhile, a pretty summer day came and went.
Then something odd happened. Instead of heat that would fry one’s skin, we in the Northeast, where the anti-4th messaging was strongest, got massive thunderstorms instead. Seems like Mother Nature did not comply with the preferred narrative of the day.
No matter, our cultural masters quickly changed the story.
Listen to this strange narrative of the day from a mainstream news source:
“Triple-digit temperatures and grueling humidity in much of the country did not seem to deter the crowds, though the heat did lead to the cancellation of parades and other events up and down the Eastern Seaboard. Some events that were going ahead as planned were called off because of the evening storms.”
See? You add the word humidity to heat and you have your transition to rain. Or something like that. They can make a story out of anything. The people who know what the right temperature should be are always quick to tell us that “climate change” is at fault, even if the climate has never not changed.
Can we just face the truth? A vast swath of elites in our own country, in the media, and other high places simply did not want the celebration of this nation’s 250th Founding anniversary to take place. They gritted their teeth throughout and pronounced anathemas on those who celebrated.
I played tennis on that day in my very blue town where absolutely no one was out and about. It was like the place had been abandoned. The next day the court was full. I spoke briefly to a person playing and pointed out that I played the day before.
“You played in that heat? It was not safe to be out.” She was scolding me.
Oh really? I get it. That’s a virtue flex I was not expecting. Somehow it happened that the cultural/political pose on the day of our nation’s 250th anniversary was to declare the weather intemperate, even dangerous, like the virus only a few years ago. Stay home and stay safe. Then it rained instead. I found myself with a chill from being soaked to the skin.
This lady at the courts apparently had not received her hourly updates on what to believe.
Yes, that is how crazy politics has become in this country. Ten states would not even agree to be represented at the Great American State Fair on the mall in Washington, D.C. To be there might have been seen as some kind of blessing of the man in the White House, and that is utterly impossible.
In the weeks leading to this, we were treated with the hour-by-hour drama of whether the D.C. reflecting pool was better or filled with algae, and whether the paint was peeling up on its own or sabotaged by someone else. I tried to keep up but the reports were too confusing to follow.
Very clearly, team blue wanted the pool green. They were hoping for failure. And not just of the pool but of the country and especially the presidency. He is not allowed to be credited with anything, even though the entire city of D.C. has never been so beautiful.
This sniffy disdain for Donald Trump as president has gone on for a dozen years. You might think these people would get tired of it, even if they disagree with some policies, as surely everyone must. But nope: hating the president is the force that gives some people meaning.
Just to make sure that the day would be remembered as something other than a patriotic display of a unified nation, someone even trotted out the theater troupe called “The Patriot Front,” weird dudes with masks who affect a fascist tone as they walk around here and there. Media played along with an exhausted narrative of threatened uprising of white supremacists.
Sorry, folks, we are not buying this stuff anymore.
The mass boycotts and arbitrary cancellations on the 250th go further than I ever thought possible. It suggests an irrational pathology at this point. Even worse was the mayor of our biggest city who used the occasion to issue a malediction on our nation’s history and surround himself with people he regarded as better citizens than anyone who votes Republican.
The governor of my blue state tried to say something meaningful at a park celebration but could not resist throwing out some zingers that indicated his own alienation, while the speaker for him pointed out that Connecticut is the Constitution State, “a document newly relevant in our time.” Fortunately, she did not fill out her insinuation but it was obvious to one and all.
I have no doubt that most of the country had a glorious Independence Day and ignored all this silliness. In particular, I saw one video of a rodeo where everyone was wearing patriotic colors and singing patriotic songs. That’s the spirit! A rodeo is what I wished I had seen.
My own sense is that Independence Day this year is not really about one day but a new beginning. This makes it different from a regular birthday. You know how those go. Everyone celebrates you, they cheer when you blow out the candles (why?), you get a present or two, and it’s all over when the party is over. The next morning, it’s all forgotten.
The semiquincentennial is different. It was not the end of something but the beginning of it. It kicked off something new, a fresh determination to live out the principles in the Declaration of Independence and its indefatigable stance for freedom and rights over tyranny and abuse. We all needed this reminder. That’s who we are. It’s in our DNA, and we will be no other. We will not be communists, despite the delusions of the mayor of New York.
Communism? Nope, not doing that. We have enough problems with Soviet-style central plans such as Obamacare, which is falling apart in real time for all to see, and also would-be commissars occupying positions like mayor, governor, or corporate head of HR. We will not join a collective and nor will we go back to being subjects of any potentate.
In an early draft of the Declaration, Thomas Jefferson wrote that the King “has incited treasonable insurrections in our fellow-subjects, with the allurements of forfeiture & confiscation of our property.” He later scratched out the word subjects and replaced it with the word citizens.
That implies a two-way relationship. The citizen agrees to grant allegiance and offer loyalty. The political community agrees that the person belongs. This relationship is not granted by birth alone. It is something we choose and something to which the community must agree.
The Supreme Court’s blunder on this issue—notwithstanding the brilliant dissent by Justice Thomas—invites Congress to act. The pressure is on. We must reclaim the American idea of citizenship. It is not too late, whether through legislation or amendment.
Independence Day this year was an odd one, but my every intuition is that it has inaugurated a renewed understanding of what makes this country unique. It comes down to one central idea: a free citizenry. We are going to get that back by hook or crook, with no letting up until the dream is fully ours again.
