Of Patriotism, Parades and Pay-to-Play

July 4th, 2019 is upon us.  And just to make sure that none of us mistakes this holiday for a celebration of national freedom, of our getting out from under the oppressive yoke of a British king, the Emperor-Wannabe, enabled by his sniveling court of sycophants and imbeciles, is forcing on the nation a celebration that is–drumroll please–about him.  Oh, and let’s not forget, his ego, his insecurity, his cowardice, and his inability even to consider the possibility of serving anything or anyone beyond his own self-interest, and the glaring rage monkey that stares back every time he looks in his talking mirror.  You know, the one that tells him, day in and day out, that he’s the fairest rage monkey in the land.

Yes, this is what America is reduced to.  A military parade of sorts, because our Emperor-Wannabe is jealous of those other guys–Macron, Putin, Xi, Kim Jung-Un–who get parades of their own, replete with tanks and planes and goose stepping soldiers.  OK, we might be spared the goose steppers, but it seems we’re fated to have the tanks and planes.  And if we need the goose steppers, Emperor Wannabe need only call to his rage-fueled minions, who’ve been practicing their goose stepping in basements and caves for years, emulating those Nazis of yore, whom they gleefully try to emulate.

So nothing about higher purpose, about letting freedom ring, about the overthrow of tyranny.  Instead, we will be treated to the spectacle of the doubling-down on tyranny, on corruption, on abuse of power.  And folks in the VIP section in front of the Lincoln Memorial will have paid to be part of this fascist spectacle.  All while Lincoln spins in his grave, wondering how it is that he could have died for a nation he strove to save from its baser impulses and behaviors, only to have its inheritors disgrace, demean, and destroy that legacy.

By allowing the Emperor-Wannabe to make himself the center of a spectacle designed to undo all that is good, meaningful, and worthy about America’s early struggle to free itself from tyranny,  we will have hammered one more nail into the coffin of our democracy.  And he will have continued his determined effort to make a catastrophic mockery of everything every American who has fought and died for this country has stood for, and stood up for.  We are now, in a deeply tragic moment, a nation yoked like cattle, like the slaves that built America, to a man and to a Republican Party so lacking in shame that even the nation’s very birth is something to be sold, to be sullied, to be stained.  Along with everything else this malignant narcissist, his minions, and his Republican Party touch.