Don't know if you've heard, but there is an anniversary of some consequence coming up. This coming Saturday marks the two-hundred-fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. It is marked as the birthday for the nation, though if we're being entirely accurate, it is actually the anniversary of conception. It is likely impossible to forge any agreement on this, in a nation where there is already such antipathy surrounding any discussion which weighs the question of conception vs. birth. Thus, we shall simply stipulate to the birth side of the argument. Happy Birthday (?), America!
The last time there was this much hyperbole attached to the 4th celebration, was fifty years ago, then the occasion of the bicentennial. Some of you may still have some of the commemorative glasses or mugs that were commissioned for the occasion. If one examines their change with any regularity, it will be seen that there are yet a fair number of the bicentennial quarters in circulation. That summer was an orgy of red, white and blue. As a nation still sorting out Watergate and it's repercussions, it might easily have been an ambivalent celebration. It came at a time when the wounds of the Vietnam War were not yet fully healed, and in the shadow of the humiliating fall of Saigon only a year before. The occasion was not without some tarnish, but as a nation we remained naïve enough to indulge in some patriotic fervor.
I can still recall this in great detail. I was a gawky and impressionable young lad of almost fourteen, that summer between eighth grade and freshman year. Still a boy, discovering a man's appetites. As a child I had been raised on GI Joe and The Ballad of the Green Berets. Between Walter Cronkite's nightly broadcast of the war scores and local television late night theater of the day, I had been fed a steady diet of war. Is it any wonder then, that I developed an appetite for it? A veritable library of war stories, military histories and other tales of courage lined the bookshelves of my room. Other shelves were filled with models, completed in painstaking detail, of fighter planes, bombers, battleships and aircraft carriers.
I was from an age we now know as Generation Jones. I'm not sure I like the moniker, but appreciate the phenomenon at least being acknowledged. We are the children of another "Silent Generation"; the last generation of Americans to remain convinced of the myth that we, these United States of America, were the bastion of freedom and the world's arsenal against tyranny. In that world, if you did not believe these things then you were not a patriot. In that world the lessons of the Vietnam War still had not been fully absorbed. It was still alright to indulge the soldier fantasies of your adolescent sons. Especially since we still lived under the threat of the Reds.
I had begun reading Ernie Pyle's Brave Men at the start of the summer break. In one of the chapters chronicling the Italian campaign, there was a very detailed account of how soldiers had built a dugout, complete with timber shoring. Not a mere foxhole, but a full-sized dugout that the average man could stand in without stooping. I read this convinced, "Hell! I could build that!" Out the back door of our house there was a short yard within a fence. Beyond the fence was brush and a hill that dropped into a gulley, running all the way down to the creek below. I found a spot I considered perfect. Far enough down the hill so as not to present any profile, and with a full, unobstructed field of fire down the hill. Also, a view of the span across the creek. From my very limited study of the subject, I was convinced that this was an excellent defensive position. With a solid dugout and some sandbags, I'd be damn near invincible. At least that's what all of those war movies seemed to indicate.
I would imagine that most in this audience are well acquainted with the diligence and follow through of your typical thirteen- or fourteen-year-old boy. This is a quality that is timeless and will apply equally in any era. So it was, that for a period of about two weeks, armed with shovel, pick and spud bar, I toiled under a warm June sun. After two days I learned the value of work gloves. After a week I had a hole about four feet square and nearly as deep. I had battled off deerflies and ticks; I was blistered, battered, but not yet beaten. For part of the second week, I enlisted the help of a couple other boys from up the ridge. I then learned that two extra bodies and shovels trying to operate in that space was not actually that much help. It did reduce a lot of the physical strain. At the end of two weeks my "dugout" was a six-foot-deep hole carved out of a hillside. That is as far as it ever got. And, as it turned out, that was good enough for the purpose of having a cool place to smoke undetected. And storing cigarettes. And skin mags. Come on! You were fourteen once!
Alright, now comes the weird part. Is it already weird? I don't know, I lived it, so who am I to say? The completion of this magnificent work occurred about a week before the 4th. The time spent digging it, the inspiration for it and the time spent in that hole, are all more memorable to me than the actual day of the bicentennial. The fourth of July 1976, the occasion of our nation's bicentennial, I spent out in my foxhole with a pack of Salems, a transistor radio, and the unsettling conviction that the Soviets, detecting our defenses compromised due to our celebrations, were going to launch a massive first-strike. I was a weird kid. And this was before drugs!
I find myself looking back at that time and seizing upon that one aspect. That maddening paranoia induced by the Cold War. My lonely foxhole vigil fifty years ago seems comical now, but however extreme, however irrational, that fear was a real thing. Thankfully, I outgrew this. The world can be grateful for 1970s girls and shitty, brown dirtweed for showing me the error of my ways. We should all shudder to think at what might have happened, if that martial mania had continued along with the subsequent amphetamine and hallucinogen abuse. That was a time when it was widely considered that the Soviet Union was the direst threat that we faced as a people.
So, what about today? What has changed in fifty years? Well, the names have changed. There are different players on the board. I have to say that I believe the only thing that has really changed is the perception. Today there are a growing number of Americans who believe that the greatest threat that we face as a people, comes from within. From our own government. It may actually be a majority of Americans by now. I will assert that the exact same case was true fifty years ago. It's just that fifty years ago, there was only a minute fringe who believed it. Today, this passes for common knowledge.
I feel like we need to have the same conversation around the 4th, as we often need to have about Christmas: do you actually know what you are celebrating? Just as Christmas means more than just presents and fancy feasts, the 4th should mean more than fireworks, a long weekend and grilling in the back yard. The death of any republic is an ill-informed populace. At the very least, Americans should be informed that July 4 marks a declaration, a beginning of a new idea, a conception which was ultimately borne into a Republic.
July 4 announced to the world that we would manage our own affairs, no longer a collection of vassal states bound to a British Empire. This Declaration of Independence is the founding document of a nation, stating that we would govern ourselves. What this document was missing was the how; what form of government was to take shape? What kind of country would we be? It would require a five-year war and another eight years of wrangling before we arrived at, what Franklin aptly opined, "a Republic. If you can keep it." It seems now that, two-hundred-fifty years later, we are still trying to sort this out.
There is one ubiquitous symbol for the holiday: the American flag. Whether flown, waved or affixed to soda cans, it is everywhere. This flag is meant to be the label; the symbol of a sovereign people united in an ideal. Fifty years ago, it could be said that the vast majority of Americans at least had some sense of what this ideal was. The ideal had already been perverted; we just didn't know it yet. Whether we had it right or wrong, there was a general consensus of what this flag symbolized. I, for one, no longer believe this consensus exists. I could, of course, be wrong. But I don't think I am.
Today there are growing numbers who seem to believe that this symbol alone does not speak to their understanding of America. It is not enough for the red, white and blue to be hoisted up the flagpole. To their thinking, this flag is not inclusive enough. To their thinking, this flag must cohabit the flagpole with a pride flag. And a Palestinian flag. Hell, in some cases even a fucking Somali flag. I wouldn't use a Somali flag to wipe my ass. You'll catch dysentary doing that!
Flags are everywhere. Everyone has their own banner now, part of the virtue signaler's accessory package. Like laws and currency, their numbers inflated to a degree that whatever value they may have once had, that value has been greatly diminished. For most, any expression of patriotism is limited to one week a year, around the 4th, when they display and wave that flag. They don't know what it means, can't even define what a Republic is. But hey! I'm waving the flag, see! That makes me a patriot. No, it does not. Not all are huntsmen, who can blow the huntsman's horn.
It is difficult to change people. It can't always be done, and when it is successful it requires a great deal of time and effort. Most sensible people consider that there is too little reward for that much effort. Most sensible people are right. Something we could do, in less time and very little effort, is change the flag. If mayors can arbitrarily declare which flags are to be displayed over city hall, then I see no reason why this should be difficult. Let's change that flag so it is an accurate depiction of the thing it is meant to symbolize. I propose a field of white (a symbol of innocence). In the center of the field there shall be a lone sheep, being spit-roasted by a red elephant on one end and a blue donkey at the other. I figure the donkey is best suited for the ass end, but that could go either way. In either case, the imagery would still be more accurate.
So, enjoy your long weekend. I hope you all have a great time. Gorge yourself on char-grilled burgers, wieners and brats. Eat up all the baked beans, potato salad and slaw you can cram onto the Chinette plate. Swill down all the Pepsi, sweet tea or adult beverages that your bladder will permit. Hell, have a giant pig roast, if that is your want. Just be sure to save enough room to choke down a generous portion of the flag. Suck it down hard to be sure you get it all. In subsequent days, if you start dropping star-spangled turds, then you'll know that you are cured.
