Dear Americans,
I know there are only a few hours left of it, but happy 4th of July!
Like too many of you, I had the exquisite displeasure of running into a Current Thing Buzzkill (CTB) today. This particular superspreader of negativity decided that one cannot celebrate Independence Day because of whatever event(s) happened recently. 'Guys, our country does some random thing that I don't like so you can't have fun tonight! You gotta hate the Star-Spangled Banner as much as I hate myself!'
This clown upset me, und ich bin nicht mal mehr ein Amerikaner! I can but imagine how detrimental these sub-sentient cretins are to your mood. So, in insufficient reciprocity for y'all's wonderful hospitality to myself, permit me to offer you a dialectical consolation: they're wrong.
They're so wrong that they don't even have to be Americans to be wrong. But they're especially wrong as Americans on and about the 4th of July.
Mind you, their original sentiment is at least somewhat reasonable. You don't walk into someone's house, screaming in joy about the Bears winning, when said someone just lost a loved one to a car wreck. Doubly so if the recently bereaved is a Packers fan. You don't barge in on someone's legitimate grief like that. But that is not the case, is it?
The CTBs are usually not personally affected by The Current Thing. They just got told to be mad about something political and now they insist that nobody gets to have a good time because they're mad. Worst of all, they somehow think that America of all places cannot be celebrated while some political wrongs allegedly exist.
America!
On Independence Day!
The whole celebration is about solving your political problems! That's what they declared in Philly, some two and a half centuries ago. Permit me to paraphrase: 'We these thirteen colonies are tired of complaining across the pond for the government to come in and fix our problems. We're doing it ourselves now.'
That is what America does. You, the citizen, don't like the system? Go fix it yourself! Leave the pleading with an aloof nanny state to the old world. That's what we do.
If anything, a given political injustice, real or otherwise, is a reason to celebrate being an American, especially today. Because you live in a country where you, the ordinary person, are both permitted and expected to go and do something about it.
Don't let some self-hating buzzkills ruin your Independence Day. Ignore them like the morale parasites that they are, and enjoy the fact that they are wrong, especially if the superficially offered complaint has some merit to it.
