The only celebration I will engage in this year is protest or subversive guerilla action
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I'm a pyro by nature, and love things that go boom. But yeah, not doing anything tomorrow.
I'm going out to a march on the 4th of July. We're protesting for independence from America
I’m traveling outside the US. Got a decent price on the flights too
State-level patriotism is always bullshit to begin with.
That's how you're tricked into loyalty based on the most arbitrary reasons.
Be the messenger of humanity and get curious about the Universe. People are brothers, and there's no pride in being born in one plot of land over the other.
If that's your reaction we need even more murder jets to do a fly over and the already ridiculously sized freedom flags will get even bigger!
But seriously, patriotism is an unnatural artificial and cultivated concept.
Indeed to be used by the state.
While walking the dog I keep tabs on houses that have flags up, and there has been an uptick for about a month now. I assume it’s for the 4th, but I’m curious who will keep their flags up.
I’ve also noticed that some people keep putting theirs up then taking them down, and I wonder what changes…
I get double pay for the holiday, yay!
Yup.
As an immigrant to the US, I've always found the blind patriotism commonplace here to be very strange. It feels even more alienating now than ever before.
Common in an authoritarian, warmongering police state.
For them it's invariably other countries that get this label, they can't think outside the box bcs of their propaganda.
Yeah I am sitting here in my shitting rotting trailer that I own thinking to myself fuck America.
Aww. Please celebrate - don't give the orange turd the satisfaction of destroying yet more American culture. Also, I won't be happy posting my favourite annual meme:
The ONLY reason I give a shit about July 4th this year is that it’s a long weekend and the last chance we’ll have to spend with family before we move out of state in two weeks.
I’m even glad it’s supposed to rain the entire time, so I won’t even feel pressured to celebrate with fireworks!
I’ve never been more ashamed to be an American.
I'm a-shamed to be an A-merican,
Where at least now I can't see.
And I won't forget the libs who cried,
Who gave that right to me.
Lemmy sings
Me, but not from USA, so....
Flags have become a warning over the last decade or so about the person waving it. It no longer has the hope of a better America, solidarity, or welcome; it’s a symbol of a myopic, selfish, aggro, uneducated person full of performative nationalism and real hatreds.
Our independence was supposed to free the people of kings and tyrants. It’s been 249 years since 1776, we have undone what the Constitution authors fought for.
Our independence was supposed to free the people of kings and tyrants. It’s been 249 years since 1776, we have undone what the Constitution authors fought for.
That's what happens if you stick with a quarter-millennium old prototype of a semi-democratic system.
The constitution was revolutionary and ground-breaking, a quarter millennium ago. But still running that old piece of toilet paper as the basis of a democratic system in 2025 is like driving a Ford Model T today and claiming that it still is the latest and greatest automobile ever created.
I always find irony in the fact that the US helped set up better forms of government in the countries it fought in WW2, Japan and Germany, than it could make better in its own country.
It does make sense though. The main motivator for politicians is power. That means, naturally political systems flow towards maximizing power for those in power, that's just the natural progression.
To change this, major political upheavals are necessary, so basically events where the whole old leadership is tossed out and the new leadership can try to setup something to stop the same thing from happening again.
WW2 was perfect for that. All those countries were in need of a completely new political system and thus they could be built better from the ground up.
The US never had any event like that (apart maybe from the civil war).
To change the system without such an event, two thirds of all relevant politicians would have to vote for changing the system that brought them to power. Not likely to happen.
In terms an American can understand: "Imagine a car..."
This is why we have constitutional amendments. It's been extended a good bit over the last centuries. The tools are there but nobody wants to, or can agree on how to, use them.
Have you looked at the amendments? So far there have only been 27 of them over 236 years. Ten of them were created within a year of the constitution being created. They were basically Zero-Day-Patches, not actual amendments, and two amendments only exist to nullify each other (18 and 21) which leaves 15 amendments over 235 years (one of which was actually also created within the first year and only ratified 200 years later).
The last time an amendment was proposed was 54 years ago and the last one ratified was 33 years ago.
Not counting the Zero-Day-Patches, not a lot of these amendments actually change anything fundamental. Notable ones are 12 (governs the election of VP), 13-15 and 19 (civil rights), 17 (election of senators), 22 (president's term limit) and 25 (succession of the president).
Notably absent from the amendments is anything that changes the core political system or electoral system.
Compare that to other countries. In the time that the US constitution hat 15 minor amendments, France had a total of 15 complete constitution re-writes, not even counting amendments. 15 full new constitutions.
Germany had 69 constitutional amendments since 1949 (76 years, so almost one amendment per year, compared to the 1/16 amendments per year in the USA).
But by far the biggest issue is that a constitutional amendment cannot actually fix fundamental systemic issues. The people who have the power to change the constitution came to power within the current system, so if they fundamentally change how the system works (e.g. by repairing the electoral system in a way that more than two parties can be relevant), they are directly cutting into their own power, so of course they won't do that.
That's what you need major constitutional crises for (like e.g. Europe after WW2), so that the constitution can be re-written from scratch, fixing the issues that lead to the crisis.
But the US has been too big to fail for too long and thus there never was anything big enough to take down the US so that it needed to be restarted from scratch. The closest they came to was the civil war, but they didn't take the opportunity to actually overhaul the system. Probably because it was still too early and there wasn't much of a precedent of how to build a better democratic system.
But who knows, at the current rate it might be likely that the US is quite close to another chance to re-write the constitution.
4th of July? You mean the Ungrateful Colonists Insurgence Day?
I find it reassuring that some people are not proud of grabbing random people off the street to send them to their death with a smile.
That's the majority of Americans. Beyond what was almost certainly a stolen election (large scale, billionaire-bankrolled propaganda, campaigns, voter disenfranchisement, and probably voting machine manipulation), Trump's disapproval rating since starting that shit has skyrocketed.
We are in an awful fascist quagmire of a situation that we are going to have to fight to free ourselves from, but that doesn't mean that the actions of this administration actually represent us.
I thought you guys don't celebrate it that much any more? Heard it got replaced with a Trump Birthday Military Parade Day or someshit. And it sucked so much that nobody is doing holidays anymore. Sorry, I'm in Europe, the news are coming in slowly from the US these days
Not sure what you're referring to, but the 4th hasn't really changed. Maybe you're confusing it with the (laughable) military parade Trump did for his own birthday?
Personally I've long found patriotism to be a pretty abhorrent concept, but I've always enjoyed the opportunity to spend time with my family regardless. To me, the 4th is much more about community than it is the country. And while this country is fucking awful, I do have a pretty great community around me that I'm grateful for.
After thinking about this myself, I’m starting to feel the same way. Instead of being proud of the country, I’m feeling like I’m just another wallet that companies and the government are trying to suck all the money out of.
Always have been, always will be.
The cost of living is going up, the housing market is a nightmare
Don't worry, once they deported or killed all the ~~Jews~~ illegals the prices will surely come down.
You're not a wallet. You're an automaton producing value for capitalists.
They dribble a little money into your wallet each fortnight so you can buy subscriptions and delivered take away.
Fair.