I know, shocker.
The trouble is that I especially can't get patriotic about gu'damn July 4th.
Let's look at what we celebrate.
Many many years ago, in Boston, some rich proto-duke-lacrosse-players dressed up "as indians" and dumped some tea into a river.
Because of a tea on taxes (or possibly vice a versa).
But wait, it gets stupider.
The british, being british, sort of, almost, not quite, bother to attempt to do... well I'm not sure really, considering the people who mattered at the time (the rich folk, who had the vote remember while the poor white folk didn't) spent the next while changing sides depending on which way the wind blew in what has to be the most half assed rebellion/counter-insurgency op since some fuckwit invaded the wrong country beginning with "I" a few years back.
Of course "We" won. Probably because the british generals spent the entire thing gmabling and whoring, presumably because Washington forgot to RSVP them for the revolution, but when the british finally got their act together they made the stupid go into full overdrive.
You see, then you get the british's offer to set any slave free if they are willing to fight to keep the taxes on tea (or whatever).
Now, you may think "Wow, being offered the chance to risk death and injury as a prerequisite for freedom, how enlightened!" but the slight fact is that when lincoln pulled the same thing during the civil war...
Yeah, so fundamentally, victor writing the history books and all*, july fourth, if we're going to view the civil war as a war "for" the slaves, as I was taught it was (and why would hte public school system lie!?), then july the fourth basically ends up being "victory for slavers day", which I find somewhat problematic.
But WAIT! there is a good thing to come out of the war, for at britains greatest hour of "meh", the great british general, Earl Sandwhich, demanded that
And on that day, which we celebrate belatedly on july fourth, the Sandwhich was born.
So to me July 4th is a celebration for that greatest (and most taoist) of all snacks, the sandwhich, which I'm pretty sure even lao tzu would have approved of.
Hooray for sandwhiches! May you never be forgotten!
* And the british going "Oh noes! We now... still have the largest empire that has ever existed EVR" which is probably why they're so practiced at understatement, when you can go "I own the entire world (and for some reason canada), I don't need to be overt, bitches" and aren't actually exageratting (except about quebec, obviously), well...
** This was of course before the cornish pasty, which was designed a few decades later as a reaction to lead mining, because the miners of the yorky shires needed something to eat that had a sort of handle they could hold while eating the pie proper, and thereby avoid lead poisoning, hence huge tonking crusts were invented; capitalism = better pies, yay capitalism!
3 comments:
Sorry to be nit picky but it was Cornwall that invented the Cornish pasty and Yorkshire gave us the Yorkshire pudding. :-)
Bek
Hey, Boston was one place where the plebes and their theorist Sam Adams in his pre-registered trademark days played a large role.
Miners don't count; they're lower class (and in the case of Cornish tin-miners, possibly Celtic).
I was told (by a historian friend) that a major reason the British fared so badly is because their forces were ultimately commanded by people who were always months late to receive news.
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