This post is very apt to be long, rambling, confusing, anger inducing, thought provoking, possibly (very) darkly humorous, and basically just me getting all this shit out somewhere…anywhere….so it doesn’t eat me alive.
If you’re game to continue on I’d love to have you. If not, as always, click out now and I’ll see you some other time.
Come July 4, 2026 (should we make it) the Grand Ol’ USA–The Great Experiment–will turn 250 years-old. That’s not a bad run. Really, it’s not. Especially for an experiment. It’s pretty good actually all things considered.
I don’t know if you were alive–or in the US–in 1976 but, let me tell you, the Bicentennial was really something! For a whole year everything was red, white, and blue. American flags everywhere. You could not escape it. Fireworks everywhere, especially come summer. I mean everywhere. You guys/gals who complain your dogs are scared on the 4th of July would have all been in a soundproof room the whole of that summer.
Hell, I was even in an elementary school play about Abraham Lincoln. My friend, Cathy, and I were in it, they dressed us up in these long print dresses with white hats and aprons. If memory serves, we narrated the play. My mother crocheted me a red, white, and blue square pattern afghan and, in the four corners was one of the following words; Lisa We Love You. I still have that afghan. Yes, I do, and it’s in good shape too. To tell you the unabashed truth, I held on to that hat and apron a lot longer than I should have as well.
1976 was not The Best of Times. We had a lot of shit going on but, for the most part, the Really Big Shit was dying down a bit and we were on the verge of The Computer Revolution. (Yeah, there was a time you didn’t have one at all let alone in your pocket.) Dare I say it, but just for a tiny bit of time it kinda actually did feel like we were One Country. United. Strong.
It didn’t last long obviously but it was nice while it was there.
The outlandish celebration of the Bicentennial gave us–as a country– the very unique opportunity to look back to see where we’d been and what we’d done and how far we’d come, to look at ourselves where were standing, and then even to try to peek ahead a bit.
But, ya know, what does a fucking 10 year-old know?
I just know that’s how it felt and it never felt that way again.
As a I sit here in my 58 year-old skin (oh so soon to be 59!) and looking back, I can see that my parents were republicans. I turned out to be a democrat. Ok, fine, I should have known that by AUH2O pin I inherited from my mother and love to wear just to confuse people. (That’s Gold Water, BTW….get it?)
Politics wasn’t real big in my house although at times I did feel a lot like “Meathead” trying to talk to “Archie”. I’m sure my parents felt the same way as my dad liked to sport an “Archie Bunker for President” t-shirt (that I wish to all the Gods I still had!) and the “Archie Bunker for President” stick button that I also inherited from my mom. I have that and the Goldwater pin nice and safely tucked away.
So, even though I didn’t really know it at the time, I was getting a fair view at what would turn out to be “The Other Side”. They weren’t so bad.
Then anyway.
None of Us were “so bad”.
I mean, we weren’t perfect and we did some messed up stuff but not like today or even 20 years ago.
Obviously I grew up in the Psychedelic 70s and there was a lot to love about it. A lot I still adore and would return to in a heartbeat. A lot of things like, Duck and Cover, that I could do without along with that frigggin’ nuclear red X painted over my town. Like the Times everyone grows up in, the 70s formed…ME. It really wasn’t the 80s though they were ok, the Cold War really did suck but, other than the hair there’s lots to like there as well. For the longest time I was probably one of the biggest Peace Lovin’ Hippies you’d ever–or never–want to meet. I just wanted everyone to get along because it’s only when we’re actually united that we are strong and we get shit done to the benefit of the majority (which right now happens to be bunch of poor ass people).
Over the last 40 years of my life I find that I have gone from
Can’t We All Just Get Along
to
Kill ‘Em All and Let God Sort ‘Em Out
or
I Don’t Give a Fuck so Just Shut the Hell Up
Between the two last ones I don’t know which one is worse.
At least the first has some passion in it and it does abound with creative ideas. Devious though they may be.
The second….not so much on either count.
But mostly I sit here going
What Did You Expect? Honestly, take a few steps back and really hard look and tell me; What Did You Expect?
People on This Side. People on That Side.
…Mostly say hooray for our side….
But that’s all they’re doing. I don’t actually see anyone who is on the Country’s Side. The Greater Good. The non-ego driven stuff that keeps us chugging along instead of mired down in the muck.
While they whine and bitch and cry and utter Poor Me, I’m told to “decry political violence”.
Well, I used to decry all violence then Sandy Hook happened and then, ya know, nothing happened, so I threw my hands up and said; fuck it.
The difference there is that, without Political Violence we wouldn’t be the United States of America we’d be the King’s Subjects.
Unfortunately, I always loved History class, especially American history and I was very good at it and I paid attention when it got to The Declaration of Independence (shortly after the signing of which we threw a war) and it goes:
“But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”
I wholeheartedly agree with that. It seems a good number of the masses agree with that still, thank you. We’re all just having a hard time finding which way the hammer is going to fall.
I have come to accept that cycle is in our collective blood as a country. Doesn’t make a “good” thing. Doesn’t make it a “bad” thing. It just IS–the more we try to sort of get people to take some version of The Pax the worse the blowback gets. The higher we, as a country, let the Eternal Pendulum swing upward one way, the swifter it will come crashing down, then up in the other direction, and over again until it falls to balance. IF it’s ever allowed to fall to balance.
Hard bit that one. Very difficult.
Every now and again, as the Eternal Pendulum appears to be swinging out of control that collective blood boils over with chaos and fear then…. POP! There goes a war. Maybe it’s a war with an outside enemy or maybe one with ourselves.
One thing is for sure, it’s almost always political. Land. Money. Both of which lead to Power. Or just I Don’t Like You. It’s hardly anything Just that starts it, it’s almost always something that makes you run your hands down you face saying “what the fuck?”
Decry it all you like. It is what it is and has been for many many centuries all across the globe.
It’s part of the Human Condition but deeply engrained in the American Collective.
Yep, I got my own solution to this problem–like most other people, we have something to add–but even His Majesty cringes at my idea so I’ll keep it to myself. I’ll just sit back and watch the Eternal Pendulum sway.
With Sam Jackson smiling in my head hearing him uttering his unforgettable words at the end of “Die Hard with a Vengeance”.
Lisa Beth Darling 