“Oh, say can you see by the dawn’s early light?” Oh wait, hold on! The U.S. Supreme Court just struck down Roe v. Wade. The 50-year-old precedent on abortion rights has come tumbling down under a stacked court of right-wing judges. “And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air…” This Fourth of July the nation has seen multiple fireworks—from the January 6 attempted presidential coup, voting rights being gutted and now the possible threatening of other civil rights and liberties, you know the hell with precedent—maybe Dred Scott, interracial marriage and slavery were decided wrong, too.
Well, ladies, all may not be lost. You still have the right to choose what kind a gun you want without a background check. So, free people, fire up your barbecue grills while those of us who are incarcerated pray for a holiday meal. Who knows, it might be fish for Independence Day.
On July 4, 1776, the Second Continental Congress declared that the 13 Colonies were no longer subject and subordinate to the monarch of Great Britain, King George III. During the American Revolution in 1776, the 13 Colonies voted on the legal separation from Great Britain. Sounds to me like somebody wanted to choose how they wanted to live. Maybe the U.K. should petition the Supreme Court for their American subjects back. Hey, who needs precedence? Maybe our Founding Fathers were in error.
I cringe at the thought of our political representatives and judges criminalizing a portion of our citizenship because of different personal and life views. Yeah, I know I’m a felon, the scum of the earth and I’m not supposed to have a point of view. We, the incarcerated, should just shut up and be scapegoated for all of our nation’s problems.
There have been mass shooting where multiple people have been killed in Buffalo, NY, and Uvalde, Texas.
The majority of the mass shootings were done by people who didn’t have a criminal record and bought their guns legally, but the politicians are putting on a tough face and saying, “We have to keep the guns out the hands of the criminals.” I agree with you, but what about the rest of you? As America find itself in this cycle of political discourse of liberal versus conservative propaganda wars, it has trapped the country in a bitter class war. The well-oiled Republican party has packed the federal courts with like-minded people and produced a public relations system that would make any magician proud — the sleight of hand, the alternative facts, the “you didn’t see what you thought you saw” — is spellbinding.
The Democrats fare no better. They seem to be less clear about their allegiances—either to the corporate world or the people. Also they lack the single-mindedness of the Republicans to get their agenda done, be it good or bad. Somehow the Democrats always seem to find themselves fashionably late to the party.
Let us sing: “the land of the free and the home of the brave…” Wait—will Georgia vote-counting be disputed again (you know we’re going into the mid-terms—right?) or is it the Atlanta Braves baseball team that we are singing about here? Well, either way, both of them are still destined to be politically incorrect.
As we celebrate the Fourth of July, our Independence Day, our declaration as a nation is that we are not to be ruled by a single-minded monarchical governmental entity that decides for the whole, but as a collective body of Americans. I now ask, what is freedom?
Dr. Noam Chomsky, a linguist and college professor who wrote many books, wrote in his book What Uncle Sam Really Wants: “There’s a growing Third World at home. There are systems of illegitimate authority in every corner of social, political, economic and cultural worlds. For the first time in human history, we have to face the problem of protecting an environment that can sustain a decent human existence. We don’t know that honest and dedicated effort will be enough to solve or even mitigate such problems as these. We can be quite confident, however, that the lack of such efforts will spell disaster.”
“And gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.” Maybe.
