This will probably piss off quite a few people, but too bad. I've asked myself this question every year for the past couple of decades, and now I'm asking you. What are we celebrating with all this patriotic, jingoistic stuff on "Independence Day?" Let's see: Our ancestors came to this continent and took it away from its rightful owners. We used our stolen riches -- and our isolation -- to build navies that could project our power globally. Then we exerted sufficient control over vast areas of the world to enable us to plunder
their riches (whether economically, politically, or by actual force) and turn it to our own purposes, usually messing up their countries into the bargain. We planned and executed one political coup after another, invaded and subdued anyone who stood in the way of
our life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, and basically took what we wanted, whether material or simply in terms of others' freedom of choice. We continue to do precisely the same things today. Our President just spent $5 trillion over the past six years or so. What did
we get out of it? We don't even get the free medical care that is taken for granted by residents in other developed countries. The rest of the world got a war, and a training ground for would-be terrorists that could never, in the wildest stretch of imagination, have been built by the terrorists themselves. They also got a lesson in what the United States of America, cradle of "freedom," thinks about the rest of the world and its wellbeing. "Manifest Destiny," then and now. We are by far the world's richest country, yet what do we give back to the rest of the world? Peanuts.
Fragments of peanuts. And we're so freaking selfish that we don't even want any outsiders coming here to work for their share (the way our forebears did, BTW). Shame on us! If we're not getting what we need, it's because a few -- a very few -- other people are taking a great deal more than
they need, not because some poor folks are coming here to scrabble on the bottom of the heap so they can make a few bucks to send back home to their families. So tell me: what are we celebrating? Now, the standard retort to this sort of thing is, "Well, if you hate America so much, why don't you leave?" Hold on there, Jethro -- did I say I hated America? Looking at it realistically, being a bit ashamed of it, isn't the same thing as hating it. And why don't I leave? Because I'm not any more willing than you are, Jethro, to give up my piece of everyone else's pie. I may or may not work a bit more than average at giving something back, but that's another issue. You see, regardless of how you think I should feel, we do (at least for the next little while) have a right to say and write what we think in this country, and this is what I think. I think, in view of the price we've exacted from the rest of the world for our supremacy, that we should be giving back 10% of our GNP in foreign aid, medical assistance and environmental remediation. We could easily afford that if we gave up fighting unjust wars and supporting the military-industrial economy that necessitates our fighting them. The remaining
90% should be enough for us, considering that it would still be far greater than the share of any other country (and a couple of continents). It's even possible that, when the rest of the world began to see us as the good guys we
claim to be, it might just alleviate the excuses for all those wars. Oh, my! How would the rich folks take our tax money then, eh? It will never happen, but
that's what would make me proud.
That would give me something I thought was worth celebrating. I like living here. I would never do anything to harm my homeland. But we didn't
earn what we've got, we
took it from others. Proud of that? My momma raised me better. And if this does piss you off, maybe it's because you're feeling a bit guilty.
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