Americana

Another 4th of July approaches me like a drunk in the street. Stumbling and fumbling and blocking the sidewalk, he adavances. Hare brain ideas that he wants desperately to be true are dispensed in a voice that belongs to the seven cans of Coors Light. He vocates on the love of this country, the greatest nation among nations. He points to the American flag on his t-shirt and asks if any of us know of any nation greater. The nation where it is our responsibility to criticize our government! The country that is governed by the people. The country where the people allow the capitalist regime to conquer their will by placating them with the media.

With that sentence the elated patriotism of this inebriation slowly fades into something much more sinister, more revealing. Did you vote?! What's the name of your state assembly person, your mayor? We blame the government and we don't bother to vote for our representatives! Is that a protest? Is that patriotic to sit idly by? We pay more attention to the lives of celebrities than we do to what the President is doing. We send our troops to die so we can sit in front of our televisions and feel safe watching the baseball game. We treat athletes like heroes when the real heroes are out there everyday risking their lives so that we can vote in an election, have freedom of the press and religious freedom. Yet no other American takes responsibility or action. God we don't even take care of our soldiers who have returned from battle!

Tears well in his eyes in anger as his face is a deeper shade of scarlet. I read the papers. I see what we are doing, and that is nothing, we are being protected so that we can live the American way. The American way to get as much for as little as possible, to not take any responsibity for our actions, to just go with the flow. What happened to this country, this land that I love? At this he drags himself away to release some of the alcohol's venom into the bin. When those fireworks are over, he turns and stumbles down the street. I watch the clock strike midnight as another Independence Day comes to an end.