The Fourth of July

For the first time in my life, well, at least the first time I can remember, I didn’t celebrate the Fourth.  I wasn’t sick, I just didn’t feel like celebrating.  Why?  Because what the hell is there to celebrate?  Our country has become a joke.  If the Founding Fathers were alive today, they’d start another revolution.  We’ve always been a nation with problems, but we found ways to fix them or work around them.  Now?  Now, we just settle for who can get the good insult in.  Washington D.C. has become Jersey Shore.

There was a time when I loved this country and what we were (supposed) to stand for.  Loved it so much, I felt the calling to defend it and enlisted in the military 1 month and 2 days after my 17th birthday (had to have my mother sign for me).  Now I will be the first to tell you that I was not the best sailor I could have been as I had issues with the military.  Turns out those issues were mine and not the Navy’s, but that’s a post for another day.  Even when we had a President that I didn’t agree with (say Bill Clinton and before), I respected them because they would do what they though was right for the country and its citizens and to get that, they would compromise.  Then came Dubya’s second term.  They hyper knee-jerk reactions to 9/11 did nothing to stop terrorism, but it did plenty to take away some of our rights.  From Bush to Obama to Trump and Biden; each took more and more of our rights and we got so used to it happening, we just assumed it was supposed to be this way.

I’m sure our Founding Fathers anticipated this possibility and gave us the chance to fix it ourselves by holding elections.  If someone in the Oval Office is a mouth-breathing fucktard, we can vote him (or her) out.  At least that’s how I think they believed it would happen.  However, in 2016, we had two of the most despicable people on the ticket for PotUS.  I was hoping that America would look towards the third party, but that didn’t happen.  Then we get Trump vs Biden, and now it looks like we’re going to have Biden vs Trump.  JFC people.  330+ million people in this country and this is the best we can come up with?

Well, we screwed the pooch in 2016, and have dug-in since then.  I think the part that makes me NOT want to celebrate our independence is the fact that about 98% of this country had picked one candidate or another instead of standing up and shouting that we’re not going to take this shit anymore.  The fact that those people have fallen lock-step in behind the most useless pieces of shit has shown me that maybe I don’t want the same United States as they do.  It’s not that I expect everyone to agree with me; that’s just dumb.  However, the fact that they don’t seem to care about being at the bottom of the barrel and are showing no signs of trying to make it better has just made me throw up my hands and quit.