I think about flags. I don’t know that I want to put the energy out there around this, but I wrote this. And I don’t want to begrudge people having a good time on Independence Day. But also my nationalism is on hiatus. But I love the idea of the United States.
A Trump flag dishonors the dream of a United States of America. Every darkened Stars and Stripes with a blue stripe rather than red white and blue vandalizes the symbol of a more perfect union and sullies those who defended that flag. When you make a Sovereign of a President you return us to subservience rather than a society where all are equal under the law. I will take my counsel from Mark Twain and Frederick Douglass today because the Union is imperiled and I mourn. But our dream for life, liberty and pursuit of happiness is not daunted by the current regime of bullies and toadies. As ever there is much work to do to restore protect the common welfare of us all. We will find our way back on track and remove down to the root these fascists and their complicit villains.
Mark Twain’s Speech for the 4th of July
Our Ambassador has spoken of our Fourth of July and the noise it makes. We have got a double Fourth of July—a daylight Fourth and a midnight Fourth. During the day in America, as our Ambassador has indicated, we keep the Fourth of July properly in a reverent spirit. We devote it to teaching our children patriotic things—reverence for the Declaration of Independence. We honor the day all through the daylight hours, and when night comes we dishonor it. Presently—before long—they are getting nearly ready to begin now—on the Atlantic coast, when night shuts down, that pandemonium will begin, and there will be noise, and noise, and noise—all night long—and there will be more than noise there will be people crippled, there will be people killed, there will be people who will lose their eyes, and all through that permission which we give to irresponsible boys to play with firearms and fire-crackers, and all sorts of dangerous things: We turn that Fourth of July, alas! over to rowdies to drink and get drunk and make the night hideous, and we cripple and kill more people than you would imagine.
What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?”
I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. I am not included within the pale of glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought light and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn.
And here I post, 3 days later, what I was thinking and reading on Independence Day, 2025.