Woe is the Fourth of July!
Reflections from a former overachieving APUSH student
My parents got married on the Fourth of July in 2008 for a couple of reasons.
One, so they would both always have the day off together. (Valid.) Two, so they could pretend the whole country celebrated with them. (Eh.)
Normally, I’d go home, and we’d have a barbecue at the beach. We’d make homemade ice cream and watch the fireworks explode over the pier a few blocks down the street. The neighboring town hosts a massive Fourth of July parade every year too. Thousands of locals and tourists line the too narrow streets to watch marching bands, local businesses, and law enforcement vehicles gallantly move down the street at a snail's pace.
I still have an Old Navy “Fourth of July” t-shirt squirreled away somewhere in their house—a reminder of what this holiday used to mean to someone like me.
My parents’ wedding anniversary is now the only holiday I recognize on July 4th.
I stopping caring about America’s birthday around the age of 18 when it became clear Trump would be the Republican nominee and any enthusiasm I shared with my fellow Americans at a Bernie Sanders rally in 2015 was halted by Hillary Clinton’s sanctimonious bump against the glass ceiling.
(Yes, I voted in 2016 and every single one since. Keep your lectures to yourself.)
In the Summer of 2017, I worked for a Community Theatre during their Summer Stock Season. Every year, we put on this fancy musical revue as a fundraiser so rich patrons could enjoy the next season without feeling too badly about paying us mere pennies. It was short, maybe a run of three days, and the actors dressed up in black tuxes and evening gowns in varying shades of red, white, and blue. It always fell on the week of July 4th.
I remember loving this show once because it was one of the only times I felt truly attached to America as an idea. (I liked taking APUSH, sue me.)
They sang songs like “Shenandoah,” “America The Beautiful,” and “Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor” in stunning four-part harmony. It never felt put-on or over-the-top patriotic. Sure, it was slightly lame, but I can accept lameness in the name of something greater. Not whatever the government or the military are peddling, per se, but a lingering spirit of something aspirational.
Honestly, it was probably the most subtle anyone could ever be about appreciating this utterly fucked up place.
During a particularly grueling late night tech rehearsal, the feelings finally got to me. I started crying—grieving, really. I knew things would never really be the same. I hate that so many of us were right in thinking that.
After the show closed, we had an afterparty. Just a bunch of college kids trying to get drunk and forget the cringe-inducing, revolving door of Southern pride and patriotism. I remember there being a sinking feeling amongst all of us—liberal artists living in the South during a particularly strange time.
Two years later, I took a class on Indigenous People’s History in North America. I spent five months learning about the unspeakable traumas and crimes waged against indigenous tribes by the US government, military, and various settlers for centuries. I also took classes studying the Soviet-Afghan War and “Post-Colonialism.” I watched as every single hope and value my Civil Rights-minded father instilled in me from birth turn into bitterness and disgust.
I haven’t really celebrated the 4th since.
I have to admit something. I really like the musical 1776.
Is it good by today’s standards? Debatable. Did I thoroughly enjoy the gender-bent, extremely gay revival of it on Broadway a few years ago? You bet your sweet ass I did.
Before storming into American indifference and disdain, I used to listen to the entire 1776 OBC soundtrack on the 4th—a sort of reminder that July 4th, 1776 was as much of a nightmare for the original participants as it is for us now.
It was hot in Philly. Really fucking hot. It was dire. No one had any clue if writing and signing that Declaration was a good idea. Thomas Jefferson probably just wanted to fuck his new wife. John Adams was annoying (lovingly). Half of the Continental Congress thought it was a supremely shitty idea, in fact. So shitty that they fucked over slaves for the next, oh, 70 years.
It was never going to be perfect. It was never perfect. We will never be perfect.
Still, I like 1776 because it encapsulates how ridiculous, dangerous, and yes, important, this all really was. Seven+ years of violence in tandem with an ever-evolving coalition of white land-owning male politicians and lawmakers fighting tooth and nail to get precisely what they thought they wanted. Even then, it was often at the expense of everyone else—women, black people, immigrants, indigenous tribes, and more.
All for what? A “more perfect union”?
Is anybody there? Does anybody care? Does anybody see what I see?
War in the United States has been outsourced for well over a century.
We wonder why and how this holiday became more about hotdogs, fireworks, and beer than the memory of war—what it brings, what it costs, and what it takes.
Living in a former colony is funny. You are surrounded by the memories of wars fought two centuries ago on the ground beneath your feet. Memorial Parks, statues, plaques, and signs—all things you had to learn by heart in the 4th grade for some standardized test.
Yet, all that seems to fade and crust over like the once careful engraving on every Civil War veteran’s grave in the face of whatever it is we’re doing now.
I was lucky enough to read anti-war poetry from The Great War early on in my school days. As Josh Datko so articulately points out in his Bloody Sonnets series, so much of it expresses the tangibles and realities of war—blood, sweat, shellfire, bones, death, exhaustion, and so much more.
What does it mean to fight in one? What does it mean to exist in the midst of one? What does it mean to watch one unfold ten feet in front of your face, as opposed to thousands of miles away on the television screen?
Some of us, myself included, haven’t ever had to ask ourselves these questions.
How easy it’s become to ignore abject suffering, endless bombings, and the life likely would have led if you hadn’t been born within the boundaries of the states.
At least it’s a good excuse to have a barbecue.
Thank you
Yup.