american nihilism

I’ve told multiple people over the last few days that the only thing I truly enjoy about the fourth of july is being able to have a little giggle about americans shitting on the british on twitter. I will be collecting shitposts about the british to send to one of my brothers so we can enjoy the ultimate americans-from-an-irish-catholic lineage past time — talking shit about the british and their empires failure.

This day is always hot, there are always so many people cramming to see some fireworks after the sun sets, and there are always people who take this day far too seriously. I’ve grown up around many people who see this national holiday as a true american holiday – as something to sit around a table full of grilled food, swapping jokes and gossip with the intonation that we are collectively better than anyone else. Hundreds of years ago, thousands of people died in order for us not to have a king or be overly taxed. They stood their ground and told their overlords that they would have none of that shit anymore and thus begat what we have today. 

I feel like at this point in our history, having the day to blow up pretty colors in the sky is a nice break for most of us, but the underlying knowledge that we are a country that is actively ignoring the signs of fascism in favor of feeling safe is more harmful than anything else. Rights that seemed to be guaranteed are being stripped away, anti-intellectualism is on the rise, and with the push to put the ten commandments in classrooms how can we collectively continue to be blind to it? 

Just a few days ago, the supreme court made an insane change for presidential immunity. There are no words to describe just how insane the ruling is, and how terrified people should be now that the highest seat in the land can almost unilaterally take any action it sees necessary to keep power and the courts will be so tied up in deciding what is and isn’t something that they can be tried for that in the end it won’t even matter. The founding fathers and their armies kicked out a king and his military just so that a few hundred years later we could circle back around to the idea of having one, as well as over taxing the average american? 

I often wonder if people truly never paid attention in history class or if they never had someone wax a little too poetic about the genius of the founding fathers and in an effort to make that person shut up went down an internet rabbit hole about how the founding fathers were mostly teenage frat boys who just wanted to live eternally in history books. Realizing that, for the most part, history is composed of men who just wanted to live forever in whatever way they possibly could, truly took a significant amount of the mystery out of how things ended up like this for me. 

There are so many, bigger conversations to be had around why america sucks and why we need to fundamentally change everything about how we function as a country. There are people who genuinely think that Obama solved racism and that the LGBTQ+ community is going to ruin future generations. We have thousands of empty homes all over the country and people that need housing, but companies have been buying them all up in order to rent out at a higher cost than a mortgage. There are so many examples of why we need to change and how it would be useful for all of us as a people, but because the inherent self obsession that was planted a few generations ago seems to be blooming beautifully now there is no overall discussion of these kinds of topics. 

Where do we go from here? How do things change? Can we simply unplug the internet and plug it back in again? We started from scratch once, why can’t we do it again? These are all questions I’ll be pondering from my blanket on the grass in my town while I wait for the sun to set and the fireworks to illuminate the night sky.