What the Way July 4th is Celebrated Says About America's Divides

My newest Substack is up, which uses the July 4th holiday to think about America's historical continuities. I use Jefferson Cowie's recent books to talk about how ideologies of extreme individualism and a definition of freedom rooted in white supremacy continue to damage our polity. I see these dysfunctions coming out clearly in the recent Supreme Court cases. 

I also don't just want to write about my Substack this time. A friend and longtime reader put a question to me that I would like to investigate. He splits his time between Pittsburgh and rural Pennsylvania, and noted how much of a big deal the July 4th holiday is in the latter place. He was wondering whether this represents another facet of our country's cultural divide.

I grew up in a rural area and lived in other rural spaces during parts of my adulthood, and I indeed can say that July 4th is a more intense event in those places compared to other, more urban places I have lived. When I was back in my hometown a few years ago for the holiday I was struck by the volume of fireworks people were letting off in their yards. As we drove on the outskirts of town to get to the official fireworks, the low end of the horizon was constantly illuminated. 

Some of this is structural. In small towns it's easier to organize communal events.There's also the boredom factor. If there's not a lot going on, a parade and blowing things up is pretty exciting. That's at least how I felt as a kid. To my friend's point, some of it is more about political culture.

July 4th celebrations in small towns tend to engage in a very uncomplicated version of nationalism (which gets called "patriotism.") It's not necessarily an aggressive or hateful nationalism, but it is certainly one that leaves little room for ambivalence or hybrid identities. Go to one of these places on the 4th, and it will feel like a real throwback to a pre-1960s form of public life. Again, it is not overtly malicious and in fact can be a lot of fun to participate in. When I was back in my hometown six years ago, my kids got to take part in the children's 4th of July parade, and we all had a blast. 

Beneath it all, however, lies the "real Americans" assumption. The overwhelmingly white and native-born crowds in these small towns see themselves as the "real Americans." They see the United States as a place made up of them and FOR them. (Hence the "take our country back" rhetoric.) It's very easy to wave the flag so hard when you are not celebrating an abstract nation but instead are affirming your concrete self.

I can contrast this with what I saw on social media yesterday, when lots of progressive and lefty folks were posting their ambivalence or even outright dislike towards the holiday. I actually found this almost as irritating as the loud jingoism I heard in other quarters. The kvetching certainly comes from real feelings and critiques, but it's intended to get internet street cred by being edgy, like me as a teen poo-pooing any and all popular music. Just as the left needs to articulate a new definition of freedom, it would serve them politically to come up with a new kind of patriotism. Dunking on the USA in public all the time will not help win converts, especially in "real America." 

An Uneasy First Post-Trump Independence Day

Every now and then I remind myself that less than six months ago a violent right wing mob spurred on by the last despotic president tried to overturn the last election and potentially turn the floor of the Capitol into a bloodbath.

Less than six months later it might well have never even happened. The leader responsible walks free, and led a rally this evening. His party refused to remove him from office and now refuses even to participate in an investigation of the event. They are spending their time actively dismantling majority rule and last week the Supreme Court just gave them an additional green light. 

When president Biden was sworn in two weeks after the attack on the Capitol, it felt like a cloud had lifted. I no longer woke up in the morning and immediately checked to find out what That Man had done or tweeted while I was sleeping. I was teaching from home on inauguration day and got to see the ceremony and had an ugly cry. It felt like a heavy burden had been lifted. With the Senate wins in Georgia, it looked like Democrats might be able to start fixing some of the damage. Vaccines started getting delivered more efficiently, the virus was in retreat. A massive relief bill passed through Congress.

Since then it's become obvious that the Trump Years were not an aberration, and that we are still living in the political world that gave rise to him. We see this in Republican attacks on democracy and the teaching of America's true history, but also in the cowardice and lack of vision among Democrats. The filibuster is being given a higher priority than the right to vote. The restrictions on elections combined with Democrats failing to deliver is going to mean an election loss in 2022 and perhaps in 2024 as well. Once this current version of the GOP has its hands on the levers of power I don't know how meaningful future elections will be.

Nobody I know who voted for Trump seems to have second guessed their decision, ever after the insurrection. A lot of people who voted for Biden seem to think that their work is done, and are doing nothing to counter the current tidal wave of reaction. I feel like I am seeing the whole Tea Party thing play itself out again, but this time with the masked dropped and outright fascism on full display. History repeats itself: first as tragedy, then as a bigger tragedy.

As I have been writing about time and time again, our country is in the midst of a low-grade civil war, one that has been going on for about thirty years now. The problem is that only one side is aware of this fact. 

At this point I just want to issue a plea to all of the people who fought so hard against Trump to get off the bench and get back out there and fight. I know we are tired, but we have had six months to rest. Time to push on the filibuster, voting rights, and the social safety net. If you are a social studies educator like me you need to get to your local school board meeting and stop the reactionaries from changing your school's curriculum into nationalist indoctrination. The power trifecta won't last long, we have to make the most of it because another opportunity like this won't be coming soon. Time to play offense instead of defense for once.

July 4th Podcast Special

This week, for the first time ever in my long and not so storied blogging career, something I wrote went viral. So if anyone read that piece and decided to stick around, I'd ask you to give my podcast, Old Dad's Records, a try. This time around I decided to go with an Independence Day theme and focus on country music, the style of music most invested in nationalism. I start with Lee Greenwood's "God Bless the USA," a propaganda anthem birthed at the height of Reagan that owes its longevity to our Foreverwar. From there I pull a record from my pile of old records, and this one is a doozy. Porter Wagoner's The Cold Hard Facts of Life is full front to back with heartbreak, murder, drunkeness, and depression. Here we see the duality of country music, which often claims the mantle of "traditional values" while diving in the darker side of life. I end with a rave for Orville Peck, who has combined 80s indie British rock with country twang in a way I find very appealing. He's also gay and wears a mask, which puts him in with a long tradition of country music eccentrics, the same tradition Porter Wagoner belongs to.

July 4th Notes From My Hometown

In the past three years the meaning of the fourth of July has changed greatly for me, since my daughters were born on that day.  Their birthday, not blowing off fireworks or engaging in nationalism, has become my main Independence Day priority.  In any case, this year I had very little July 4th spirit.  The events of the last year, from Ferguson to Charleston, have been harsh reminders of this nation's failure to live up to its promises.

This year I spent the holiday in my rural Nebraska hometown for the first time in years.  While I wrung my hands a little yesterday, I was happily surprised at what I witnessed this morning.  My wife and I went out to Allen's, the local department store, to get party supplies.  Afterwards we drove downtown to the Blue Moon, the local coffee house, and grabbed some espresso-based drinks.  It's good to see such local institutions still thriving, and that the downtown has rebounded while the mall has fallen into disrepair.  Of course, most of the commerce is going down in the metastasizing tumor of box stores and Applebee's next to the highway on the edge of the north side of town.  You can still get away with pretending that it doesn't exist.

We took our daughters to an event at a local park, which reminded me of what's good about my hometown.  There was a nice, chill atmosphere of people mingling and saying hello, and catching up with those (like me) returning from out of town.  My hometown was really built up during the Progressive Era of the early 20th century, and much of the public-minded ethos of the age has still managed to survive.  Some things had changed from my childhood, such as hearing Spanish spoken on a pretty consistent basis.  Changes like that are positive in my opinion.

Something else hadn't changed, something I wonder whether it is even capable of changing.  In my overwhelmingly white hometown, expressions of patriotism are as ubiquitous as the air one breathes, and thought about just as deeply.  I wondered today if anyone in the park with me questioned this nation's ability to live up to its highest ideals.  I also got chills thinking about how many of them might sympathize with the Darren Wilsons of the world rather than the Micheal Browns.

Quick Independence Day Thought

Another Independence Day is upon us, and yet again the fireworks and celebrations are in the air.  It also happens to be my twin daughters' birthday, so it is easy for me to focus on the personal meaning of this day and to forget about it being a national holiday.

Apart from the World Cup, I tend to absolutely detest nationalism.  Is there anything more pathetic than thumping your chest about the country you happened to be born in?  That feeling is exacerbated this week by news that the American flag is yet again being used as a weapon, this time by howling nativist mobs assailing unaccompanied immigrant children fleeing strife and poverty in Central America.  We are the richest nation that has ever existed, but react to the desperation of others with hatred rather than empathy.  That fact calls to mind the greatest July 4th speech ever given, Frederick Douglass' jeremiad "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?"  Here is a relevant passage, sadly still relevant in this day and age, even if chattel slavery no longer exists:

"What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy — a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour."

We congratulate ourselves on our freedom in a nation that incarcerates its own people at a higher rate than any other in the world.  We celebrate our victory over a great empire in the 18th century when America today is the world's greatest empire, one that rains death from the sky on a regular basis without a declaration of war.  We call ourselves a "nation of immigrants" while treating the most vulnerable of newcomers like beasts.  I frankly don't see much to celebrate this July 4th.

Memories of the 4th of July on the Plains

Growing up July 4th was always one of my favorite holidays, and for one very obvious reason: firecrackers.  It's a scientific fact that little kids of all stripes just love to blow stuff up, and the Fourth let's them do it with full social approval.  Until I was older, my hometown banned any fireworks bigger than sparklers and glow worms, which was a real drag.

That, of course, didn't stop the fun, it just meant that our patriotic blast-fests had to be held outside of city limits.  Often we celebrated Independence Day as a family get together.  If on my mom's side, we'd go to my grandparents' farm, where we could blow off whatever we wanted to our heart's content.  If on my father's side, we went to my aunt and uncle's farm, and did much the same.  Best of all, in the summer of 1984 on the way home from a family vacation to Kansas City, we stopped at a fireworks warehouse off of the interstate and bought a massive amount of bottle rockets.  These classic firecrackers/roof fire waiting to happen have long been illegal in Nebraska, prompting its residents to cross the border into the Show Me State to pick up some contraband.  My dad, who loved firecrackers, bought enough bottle rockets to last us into the early 1990s, probably well past the date they could have been safely used.  The open space on my relatives' farms made them optimal bottle rocket launching sites.  The occasional strays only ended up in my grandma's potato patch, rather than setting a neighbor's yard ablaze.

The farms were also great places for those dinky parachute bombs, and gave plenty of room for my cousins and I to chase the little piece of cardboard attached to a tissue parachute that seemed to get tangled in the cottonwood trees half the time.  We also had strategic methods of deploying our fireworks based on the tenacity of Nebraska's insect population in the summer time.  Come July mosquitos, grass hoppers, junebugs, crickets, locusts, lightning bugs and all other manner of six-legged critters swarm the countryside.  This was especially important at my aunt and uncle's farm, which sat down in a creek bottom that was a veritable breeding ground of creepy crawlies.  After our drive home from my aunt and uncle's house, the front grill of my family's van looked like a freak science experiment.  To hold the insects at bay, my cousins and I judiciously created a perimeter using smoke bombs, which were harmless enough that our parents let us use them without supervision.  They also wanted relief from these awful, dumbass june bugs that loved to fly straight into our foreheads out of either stupidity or spite.

While the smoke bombs and bottle rockets were a riot, my most cherished memories involve some quality time with my grandfather.  He was a gruff, hard man who had endured an abusive father, Depression-era poverty, and the loss of one of his kidneys during World War II.  If you happened to be sitting in his cigarette burn-holed recliner when he came into the room you'd better jump up and get out of the way.  He was a huge man with knuckles like doorknobs that testified to a life spent working on the farm.  Even in retirement he wore overalls and work boots every day except for Sunday, when he donned a severely out of date brown suit for going to church.  As tough as he was, he really had a soft spot in his heart for his grandkids, and loved spending time with us, even if we didn't say a lot to each other.  I still remember sitting with him on the back porch on the Fourth, with a big paper sack full of inch and a halfers.  My grandpa would light one after the other, holding each in his hand just long enough that when he tossed it out of his hand, it would explode before hitting the ground.  I liked just sitting there with him and watching, and each Fourth for the past sixteen years brings the sad thought that I'll never get to do that with him ever again.