I was talking to one of my friends and he mentioned staying home on July 4, citing how there are a lot of really ugly things going on in the US.
After thinking about this myself, I’m starting to feel the same way. Instead of being proud of the country, I’m feeling like I’m just another wallet that companies and the government are trying to suck all the money out of.
The cost of living is going up, the housing market is a nightmare, I don’t feel very confident in our government at all, the job market is a nightmare…
I think I’ll be staying home this year too… anyone else?
Independence day celebrations are not unique to America.
In fact, the best ones are about independence from the US
Which ones are those?
Hmm let me see. True former colonies include Cuba, the Philippines and Liberia. The Panama Canal Zone. Hawaii was unceremoniously annexed, as were Guam and Puerto Rico. And a host of smaller islands.
In a broader sense, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq are also very happy they’re once again independent from the US.
In an even broader sense, most US allies are working for independence from the unreliable US as we speak.
I was asking which countries have independence days that celebrate independence from the US.
The Philippines celebrates their independence from Spain.
Vietnam celebrates their independence from France.
I won’t bother going on, but nice try though.
Hey you weren’t supposed to know that!
We have one of those, and it’d be creepy even if historically it wasn’t debatable that the event itself was for the better.
Fair enough, I just disagree. Gaining independence seems to me like a positive thing worth celebrating. I’m happy whenever I see an ex-colony celebrating their day.
Not saying we Americans don’t take it a little far, but hey, it’s the one day where you can be patriotic without that creepy vibe.
America fought for independence from Britain because the wealth of the nation was being sucked away and spent for the whims of a handful of wealthy people, and because the people were powerless to chose who the government was. If you factor in the insane number of insanely Gerrymandered districts and significant quantities of votes going through Musk’s servers with no external scrutiny, a broken electoral college and a supreme court intent on deleting the constitution starting with section 3 of the 14th amendment (and now moving on to the rest of it), removing religious freedom, I see everything that the founding fathers fought for and everything that the civil war was fought for being stamped on by one deluded racist moron and his crazy sycophants and enablers. It was never really freedom from slavery anyway when you have such vast numbers of black men working for no wage in profiteering private prisons for decades just for smoking some pot or stealing some groceries while rich men who do drugs or steal tens of thousands get a slap on the wrist.
Yeah, well, that depends on who gained independence from whom and whether you think you’re independent now. Also on whether you’d be indepedendent from any guys who’d like to be independent from the now guys if they were to be independent.
See, political independence for a group requires that you align with the idea the group has of itself. I don’t know that I have that overlap with any particular political delineation, so I may need an organization a touch more nuanced than an independent, sovereign nation-state.
Also, gonna need some citation on the lack of creepy vibe, as mentioned above.
How many are on July 4?