With Some Misgivings...

... I will be celebrating the 4th.  Presumably like Rad Geek, who paints the 4th as a day celebrating the death of an empire (rather than the rise of a new one), I will be telling myself that I am honoring revolutionaries as I set off the $70 worth of fireworks we bought last night.  I will be reminding myself, as will many of those I'll be grilling out with, of a people willing to take up arms and sacrifice their lives to fight the government employed thugs and armed henchmen of despots.  I will think fondly of the men who plunged the tips of their bayonets into the overfed bellies of idiotically attired members of a military force designed to return British subjects to their appropriate place, that is, place them squarely beneath the iron fist of insane George.

But it will be bittersweet.  As I remind myself of these facts, I will nevertheless be quite aware that our neighbors, looking over the fencerow approvingly, will silently applaud what they perceive to be our patriotism and nationalism.  They will perhaps thank a god they blindly worship that they live next to people who worship, like themselves, the apparatus of the American State.  A feeling of solidarity will well up in their breast, they will turn towards their flag and fireworks, and with hearts ablaze, proclaim their devotion to a band of robber barons, namely, their congressmen, senators, judges and presidents.  Perhaps they'll offer me a beer.  Perhaps I'll even share it with them.