It Felt Weird Celebrating America, But It Was Necessary

Our wonderful, weird, and dumpster fire of our townie-driven country deserves it’s day.

It always does, every year.

No matter the current administration, infiltration, or lack of positive action, but especially this year because it will get better, and it needs to—on both sides of the polarizing coin—but overall, it’s oddly shitty right now.

At a minimum, we can appreciate the fact that we’re not a country at war on our own soil… but the 250 mass shootings and 22,000 plus shootings in general only halfway through the year doesn’t exactly suggest peace.

Mentally, I can drift into a day, some years in the future, when we won’t be doing everything in our power to set the country back 60 years time—in an oddly theocratic fashion that the majority of the people really did NOT ask for, not care about beyond a party particularity, or their own stubborn pride.

How many Republicans actually, genuinely gave a shit about overturning Roe v Wade?

How many went to the polls the last 3 years with RvW on their mind. I don’t believe it was the majority of them, which makes those people about 25% of the country. Not the majority.

Less government is a famous Republican calling card for many issues but when it comes to a situation that will literally never affect anyone who actually cared a single damn about making abortion illegal.

The Twitter lawyers can make all their bullshit technical arguments here but they sent it back to the states so that states could ban it. Let’s be real.

Beyond the creepy invasion of the government into women’s bodies, what bothers me more than anything is the fact that all those in genuine, aggressive support of this egregious Supreme Court decision will never ever in their lives be affected by this decision, but hundreds of thousands of people who never wanted this to happen will be negatively (and positively) affected by this.

And what did the democrats do about it besides not codify it in time?

What have the democrats done about anything at all?

Should’ve been done the moment the nominee shifted to the Republicans and the whispers first began. The day that set of gun regulations was passed into law was not some sort of monumental moment that will do down in the history books. It was a minor sigh of relief, nothing more. No applause. Instead an angry and annoyed, “about damn time.”

No praise here for the Democrats either, it took way too long to reach the other side of the aisle, and this kind of situation—an 18 year old grabbing assault rifles, days after his first “adult” birthday and gunning down children—for Republicans to say “fine.” Which is, again, nauseating to say the least.

Just goes to show how little each side was willing to move in order to make progress.

We’ll see if it these regulations even make a difference or if they don’t go far enough. Or hopefully we won’t see but all signs indicate we will.

Can you still buy an AR in Texas on your 18th birthday? I will look.

We’ll come back to the donkey brains in a moment.

Surely there will be mothers who didn’t know they wanted to be mothers, kept the baby because flying to another state wasn’t a viable option, and the child changed her life for the better.

That will happen.

There will also be illegal and dangerous abortions.

Women will die. Due to both the dangerous abortions and at the hands of scumbags who want anything but a child.

The same argument the right loves to use for guns (not suggesting it is of any similar sentiment) that criminals will always get guns…

Well… pregnant women who want abortions will always get them.

There will also be women who’s lives are horrifically altered (or ended) in ways they wouldn’t have even dreamed of, because an early abortion would’ve saved their life or changed it for the better.

From a higher level:

The simple fact that the government will be enforcing a decision in specific locations for its citizens. The decision being banned would never affect any other citizens, but it could endanger the life, well-being, and quality of life, and pursuit of happiness of the set of citizens that previously had the right to this decision.

It’s just a decision that belongs to the woman faced with it, not the gross old fingers of Clarence Thomas.

The same guy gunning For SAME SEX MARRIAGE?!?!?

In pride month, no less.

I mean what the fuck are you on about, Old grumpy Clarence?

{{ I’ll ask this in a semi-cruel manner }}:

Can you get a Doctor’s note to get an abortion when the health of the mother is on the line in the illegal states?

Onto The Donkeys

And the disaster they’ve been as of late.

So down in a spiral we go, a year after a nauseating and despicable exit of Afghanistan, leaving thousands of our neighbors from the last 20 years out to dry on what felt like a ‘fuck it’ whim rather than a strategically calculated plan orchestrated by our military. A military which costs more to maintain than the next closest 10 countries COMBINED. We left millions in military equipment for the violently repressive Taliban to use on their own people over minor religious offenses. A religion in which their petrified citizens may or may not believe in, but are forced to buy into with a US-issued weapon aimed at their head.

We’re paying insane gas prices while backing out of a Paris Climate Agreement which already doesn’t do nearly enough to actually fight climate change. All the while the oil companies get even richer, and in part because we fucked up our own supply and demand situation by shutting down our own pipeline expansion but aiding in the construction of foreign lines.

Sure, we’ll take the rudamentary gun regulation efforts 10 years late that likely will not go far enough to catch a shooter similar to the Uvalde loser.

We’re two years removed from the police brutality riots that momentarily took over the world and varying degrees of legislation have been put into motion in states all across America to combat a systematic issue. There is still work to be done on a grander scale—in the court and housing systems, in K-12 education and positive youth engagement, and immediately in the communities.

It’s a strange and dangerous time.

BUT ABOVE ALL

But I can still go to the beach or a barbecue without the fear of rockets fucking up my fourth, and subsequently, my life.

I can still vote every year.

I can still write this article without the fear of imprisonment.

To improvement and progress and democracy I say Happy 4th.

I love you, America.