The 4th of July and Other DownsI've noted with amusement was how the relative meanings of "red" (which at the time, kiddies, meant Communist) and "blue" have shifted over the years.
The Day dawns again and it's time to love freedom. All the fascists come out to play and long hair and peace are decidedly un-American. Keep muttering things like "My country, right or wrong" and "America, love it or leave it" and you're really in. Middle-class America is out in force to celebrate liberty. Don't look now, but there's a knife in your back. A car goes by covered with flags, streamers, bunting, decals, and assorted other paraphernalia vital to your well-equipped American. Off we go to a fireworks show whose rockets sounded just like mortar fire. (Everything about the Fourth is so appropriate.) A motorcycle cop chomps away on something or other and glares at us with hatred that should have melted his shades as he leans on his bike and tries to figure a way to bust us. Red, white, and blue are the colors of the day, but be careful you don't have more red than blue or you might get lynched in the name of freedom. (You can have as much blue as you want, but the whiter you are, the better off you'll be.) Don't look now, but all the flagpoles look like spears. All in honor of the 36,000 brave boys who've given their lives to bring freedom, truth, beauty, and President Thieu to the South Vietnamese. Three cheers for Richard Nixon and six for J. Edgar Hoover, and better dead than red. The officially sanctioned day of national paranoia has come again, and all is right with the Pentagon.
Monday, July 04, 2011
7/4/11 the third
And one last thing I like to post every Fourth. It's something I wrote about a trip to a fireworks display on July 4, 1969.
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3 comments:
That was a fabulous rant and almost made me cry!
Working on a post about middle aged nostalgia and how I started to cry when a young guitar prodigy played in the style of my stepfather (called "thumb pickin" if you ever heard of Chet Atkins)...
I get old, I get SO sentimental... guess I ain't the only one! ;)
BTW dude are you on Facebook? Or are you, as I suspect, one of those Facebook holdouts-with-a-vengeance? Or maybe, its just for your cousins and old girlfriends and people like that? Whatever, I understand all reactions-- from total phobia to staying tethered to it 24/7, so I don't judge! ... But if you are there and somewhat open to the masses, I am there as Daisy Deadhead and basically friend all progressives, unless they are creepy Al Goldsteinish misogynist hippies, and I daresay I mighta let a couple of those guys through too... I do let the R Crumbish ones through, a personal weakness of long-standing I will likely regret one of these days... someday I fear Lenny Briscoe or Bobby Goren or somebody like that will knock on my door and (insert New York accent w/weary cop vibe) "Whaddaya mean you were FACEBOOK FRIENDS and you never met em? How could you be friends?!" ... and I have spent more than a few minutes preparing for this moment, if it should ever occur: "I am NETWORKING ON THE LEFT!" is my final answer. That's my story and I'm sticking to it! (In case you haven't noticed, cops and juries believe all kinds of fucking fairy tales these days, especially in ORLANDO) ... in any event, its easy to friend everyone when I don't use my real name, which also means people who knew me back when I was 10, often don't friend me back at first because they don't recognize the name. So I understand why other folks don't go to Facebook under their real names, since you know, I don't either.
If you aren't on FB, consider joining under a pseudonym for the networking and info capacities. I finally got my cousin on under a pseudonym and I am elated. There is nothing like it for organizing and spreading the word about events, quickly. Except for Twitter.
You on Twitter? I don't do it much except to update the blog (I'm there under the name Daisy Deadhead) but sometimes have had amusing binges wherein I use a #GlennBeck hashtag and pick fights and like that. I will follow yours if you follow mine! And in fact, like Rachel Maddow, I will follow yours even if you don't follow mine.... :) If you join Networked Blogs, your blog-link will automatically post to both your Facebook and Twitter accounts, and you won't have to do a thing. (I am *dazzled* by it, like some old lady dazzled by technology!) I dunno if you have tried any of these, but it has changed blogging... I have a thread on my blog, and then another thread on Facebook about what I wrote on my blog. Sometimes the conversations are radically different.
Feel free to friend me if you want to! Or whatever!
I think for me it's less nostalgia than regret that that sort of politically involved cultural rebelliousness seems much less in evidence today.
That is, it's not "I wanna go back to the '60s," it's more "I want some of that '60s-type radicalism to emerge now."
I am on Facebook if you consider having an account I rarely ever look at as being on. I get uncomfortable with FB's sloppy privacy (non)protections.
But I will be more than happy to friend you the next time I'm on. Whenever that will be. :-\
Nope, no Twitter account. Can't get interested.
Thanks for the tip about Networked Blogs. I will check that out.
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