My adopted state of Oregon does not allow private citizens to possess the hurtful things. As a card-carrying resident of a Blue State I am “led” (that is ruled over) by people who believe the main responsibility of government is protect we the people from ourselves. (As opposed to the Madisonian style of government that rules the Red states, declaring as our Found Father did, that, “The primary function of government is to protect property from the majority.”) No fireworks that leave the ground, or contain more than X amount of gunpowder. Those are reserved for the state, county, and metropolitan government to cash and carry. And every year, at precisely ten p.m., fireworks explode over the river that knifes through my fair adopted city.
I walk out to the pavement, barefoot and smoking through bloody gums. Explosions ring out through the Willamette River Valley for precisely five minutes. Then all is still. Apart from the sirens. The shouts. The drunken ramblings. The laughter of kids. And we can’t forget the many and varied secondary explosions from all over the city. Call those concerned citizens taking the law into their own hands. Vigilante patriots who just can’t let this day pass without blowing something up. Sure, you can tap their phone, peek into their bank account, arrest them on sight at any Port of Entry, freeze their credit cards, destroy their rental history, withdraw federal student financial aid, and lock them up in a four-by-four foot steel wire box on a hot beach in the south of Cuba…but, by God, they’ll be damned if they let the fourth pass without blowing something up in the sky.
(And whatever you do, don’t question how they celebrate their national holiday. You’ll be immediately earn the label “whinner” or “sissy,” or “bitch.” You’ll be asked what the Founding Father’s would think of all this tripe and if you know you’re history then you’ll admit, “They’d probably hate me. George Washington, the Burner of Villages, would probably have me shot me on sight, like those men who led the Mutiny of the New Jersey Line.)
Often I dream of flying, but I’d hate to fly on the fourth. Last night I dreamed a dream…but now that dream is gone from me.
Why do I hate America?
Plenty of reasons. Among them the fact that I must continually repeat them in face-to-face communication.
Today’s Encouraging Words come from Howard Zinn:
“War is like cyanide: one drop and you’re dead.”
As Will Hunting said, “You want a good book, read People’s History of the United States. That book’ll knock you on your fucking ass.”
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