The Semiquincentennial? PAH!

 

The Great American Wet Blanket

If President Biden had planned a big celebration for the 250th anniversary of American independence, Donald Trump might not have ruined everything for everyone in this semiquincentennial year.   The plans would have already been in place, and Trump wouldn't have had to change them much - and I would argue that it would have been so far along that there would likely have been no way that Trump could have made the celebration about himself, especially if a world's fair had been in the offing.

Instead, Biden decided to wimp out.

Former President Biden had been against any celebration that would be deemed partisan or political  and opted for a celebration that would focus on the nation's democratic principles - fine - but he preferred a reflective, scaled-down, sober approach to the anniversary - not fine, especially when no one spends time thinking reflectively or contemplatively in the summer!  Trump, of course, is not a contemplative or reflective person (the only reflection he's ever had was looking in the mirror, which he does at least five times day), so Biden's decision to have a low-key observance left a great deal of room for Trump to work in.  Hence the Great American State Fair, Trump's honky-tonk party on the National Mall in a degraded Washington where the reflecting pool has become an algae farm and White House has become more ghetto than Anacostia.  The fair, already plagued by sporadic power outages and melting ice cream, has gotten worse since I commented on it the other day.  Robert Van Winkle (he's a rapper, Google his name to find out his rap name, because I never refer to rappers by their noms d'etage; I only refer to chosen names of people I respect!), the last performer who didn't cancel his appearance for Trump's semiquincentennial shindig, did just that and was a no-show.  One person who did attend the celebration got so bored, he put his passion out.  (That's a personal expression of mine to describe the act of something that rhymes with "mastication.")

It's all disheartening when you imagine what could have been - a big celebration that brought people together as well as one that allowed to people to contemplate our ideals toward liberty and democratic principles.  The 1976 Bicentennial may not have been marked with all of the pageantry it deserved  (*cough cough* Expo '76 canceled, *cough cough*), but, coming as it did after a decade of Vietnam, Watergate, and the Arab Oil Embargo, it was a fun time and it brought a sense of relief to the nation, which had been through so much strife in recent memory and was looking forward to a new beginning, having gotten rid of Nixon and having put the war in Southeast Asia behind us.   If Biden hadn't been such a Debbie Downer and hadn't been primarily focused on supporting community-level and state initiatives, as well as civic service projects, we could have had a memorable Independence Day this year that was something more than the annual parades and fireworks displays.  And I don't even want to contemplate what the semiquincentennial would have been like had Biden passed off his low-key observance plans to a President Kamala Harris, given that Harris' idea of fun is drinking chamomile tea in a velvet-upholstered chair.   To be honest, we don't know what sort of celebration Harris would have presided over.  But what's worse is that we do know what sort of celebration Trump is presiding over.

Perhaps a big celebration in 2026 with a world's fair and lots of fun was out of the question from the start.  Sure, we had problems in 1976 - decaying cities, stagflation, "Afternoon Delight" hitting number one - but we didn't have any problems we thought we couldn't handle.  But since July 4, 1976, we've had a half-century of downers - the Iran hostage crisis, the Moscow Olympics boycott, John Lennon becoming yet another New York City murder statistic, Reaganomics, MTV,  "Like a Virgin" cluttering the top of the Billboard charts for six weeks, AIDS, crack, right-wing talk radio, Clarence Thomas, Newt Gingrich, Kurt Cobain becoming yet another Washington State suicide statistic, the O.J. Simpson murder trial, the Clinton impeachment, 9/11, the war in Afghanistan, the war in Iraq, the war against the Islamic State, the war in Iran, a Target store opening in the historic Carson Pirie Scott department store building in downtown Chicago, the Tea Party, MAGA, COVID, Trump's first term as President . . . and for the past year in change we've had Trump's second term is President, and the second verse is worse than the first.  It seems that Trump has shoved a decade's worth of revolting developments into that short time frame.

In short, we've had fifty years of so many bad breaks that to celebrate this country and its history with a big party seems to have become a fool's errand . . . and some of the disregard for our history from both the left and the right warrants another post for later.

Anyway, the ultimate big party, a world's fair, was likely not going to happen this year even if Martin O'Malley were President now.  Because the last American world's fair in New Orleans in 1984 was underattended and a financial flop.  Perhaps the Great American State Fair, with its shanty pavilions and its big Ferris wheel, was Trump's attempt to produce a world's fair on the cheap.  Maybe he still has memories of the 1964-65 World's Fair that took place in his native Queens and "inspired" him.  But a real world's fair? In These States?  Not after so many world's fairs have been financial flops - that includes the 1926 Sesquicentennial Exposition - and not after Congress restricted government involvement in such events.  (We don't even have federally funded U.S. pavilions in foreign world's fairs, and the ones that get privately funded when corporate America feels like funding them are poorly executed.)  In addition, digital technology allowing exhibits of world's-fair-quality and the half-baked joke of a permanent world's fair that is EPCOT in Florida have rendered international exhibitions in the United States as obsolete as the Victrola.  

Why indeed have a big party in These States right now?

What's there to celebrate?

Independence Day 2024

 Happy Fourth . . . 

. . . in spite of everything.

Happy Fourth? Really?

I'm not feeling very patriotic this year.

In the past two years and change, America has proven itself to be a nation virtually unworthy of celebrating, since, thanks to COVID, it's proven to be a nation that's unable to tend to the well-being of its citizens and, thanks to Supreme Court rulings overruling legal abortion, gun-control laws, and environmental standards,  a nation that doesn't care about that inability.  And the January 6 insurrection underlined and put an exclamation point on that inconvenient truth.

There's an Independence Day parade near where I live happening today, and I'll probably go more out of curiosity than anything else; it's the first parade in this nearby town since 2019 thanks to COVID, and I'm wondering if there'll be new participants in the parade or the same old marching bands and floats that I've seen numerous times before in the past decade.  But patriotism?  I gave up on patriotism, actually, because there were too many scoundrels seeking refuge there.

My British ladyfriend Therisa, who famously performed as a ballerina statue mime in New York's Central Park before COVID hit, has endured the stupidity of her adopted homeland for twenty-two years.  She got through eight years of George Walker Bush's Presidency, threatened to leave the country if Sarah Palin became not President but Vice President, suffered the humiliation of performing at an event attended by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, watched the Tea Party take over Congress, saw "that fuckhead" (as she calls him) Donald Trump win the White House, and probably watched the January 6 insurrection unfold along with everyone else.  But the aftermath of 1/6, the rise in violent acts in These States, and the growing power of the far-right Supreme Court finally broke her resolve.  She and her American husband - and their three-year-old daughter - are packing up and pulling out.  They're planning to move to the south of Wales, where they don't have to worry about their daughter getting shot at school and where they also know their daughter will come out of the British school system smarter than if they had sent her to public school in the Big Apple.  I'm wondering how I can escape the United States without having to marry a British woman (though I do understand that Kate Beckinsale is single), and I now fantasize about living in a country where I can have free health care, unadulterated food, and the ability to purchase the Volkswagen of my choice (like a base Golf or a Polo).      

But for now, I'm one of the millions of Americans who want to get out but can't escape.  And I'm at a disadvantage due to the fact that I've never traveled outside North America ever.

The literary scholar Paul Fussell once said that July 4 was the one day that the United States should only receive praise.  I had once said that September 11 is the one day that the United States should only receive sympathy.  In 2022, I'm not so sure the U.S. is worthy of receiving either.

Independence Day 2020

Happy Fourth.  Stay safe.

Tanks A Lot

"There is one day of the year when America should receive nothing but praise.  That's July Fourth." - Paul Fussell (1924-2012) 

If Fussell were alive today, he might want to eat his own words.

On July 4, I usually publish a meme wishing greetings for Independence Day and leave it at that. But I can't do that this year.  Instead, I must speak out on how Donald Trump hijacked the national Independence Day celebration in Washington.  He plans to make a highly politicized speech not about the virtues of America but rather what he thinks the virtues of America are.  That is, military power - and lots of it.  VIP tickets to the celebration have been given to members of the Republican National Committee but not the Democratic National Committee.  Trump expects military leaders to flank him on either side when he appears, and he's leading a celebration that includes several of these.

This is an Abrams tank, a component of the U.S.'s mighty arsenal that has been used in many a military adventure, which Trump, I've been led to understand, wanted to have parade down the streets of Washington to show how bad-ass we are - no, how bad-ass he is.  These tanks are huge enough to crush rocky terrain, as well as asphalt. That may be why they will be merely parked outside the Lincoln Memorial but not be paraded down Constitution Avenue.  But we all know that Trump - and the Republican Party, which has made it clear for decades that Democrats are not a legitimate part of America - would love to have them in motion.  This celebration - dubbed a "Salute To America" - will be a political rally masquerading as a national celebration, and at a great monetary cost, with Trump acting like the dictator he wants to be, looking down at all he controls.

And by the way,  I can only think of one time a President sent tanks to a major American city.

And it didn't work out well for Detroit in 1967 either.

Trump got this idea from watching France's Bastille Day parade in Paris.  Ah, France - elegant perfume, intelligent movies, splendid urban architecture, high-speed rail - and this is the idea Trump wants to emulate?

There are other parts of the national Independence Day celebration in Washington that have nothing to do with Trump.  But this part is certain to grab all the headlines.  

Happy Fourth!

Independence Day 2017

Happy Fourth! :-) 

Happy Independence Day!