Happy 4th?

 I recently saw that half of Americans don't have any idea what they are celebrating on the 4th of July, “including 61 percent of Gen Z respondents.”  That is certainly consistent with my experience, with rural Americans and, especially, rural young people. On average, the "Proud to be an American" crowd doesn't have even the slightest idea what parts of American History they should be proud of and what parts should be causing deep shame and embarrassment. Worse, at least half of them don't have the capability of feeling shame or an obligation to make things better for anyone but themselves. 

 This is the crowd that, exemplified by Elon Musk, think that philanthropy, empathy, and community are obsolete concepts. If you want to put a circle around the people who have caused the United States to become a lawless trash can of fools and degenerates, this is the group you put your focus on.

 A few days ago, I was talking with a friend and we were trying to determine when our police departments quit cracking down on illegal exhaust systems. Where he and I live, the noise level is often bad enough to make us decide to pack up and move to someplace quieter.  When I was a kid, 60 years ago, every young man who owned a motorized vehicle, from scooters to cars, worried about the smallest pin-holes in their exhaust systems.  Any sort of unmuffled sound would get them stopped, ticketed, and it might even result in the vehicle being confiscated; if it was the second or third time they've been stopped for that offense. From the early 1970s until the late 1990s and early 2000s, most states performed emissions testing, which included visual inspection of vehicles’ intake and exhaust systems for illegal modifications.  When that ended, so did anything resembling law enforcement of vehicle noise laws. Today, it's impossible to tell the difference between a modified, aftermarket exhaust system and a straight pipe on a huge number of vehicles of all sorts, including vehicles that are absolutely illegal on public streets, regardless of exhaust system condition. Since I still read about cops making house calls when neighbors make a disturbing the peace complaint, I know the country hasn't gone stone deaf. We have just gone stone lawless. When, and why, did that happen?

 The answer to almost every question in these United States can be found by following the money. And there is certainly lots of money to be found in the illegal exhaust business. But that doesn't explain why people want that kind of lawlessness, and they seem to want it in large quantities.  First the Nixon Administration (with a major impeachment threat setback) and, then, the Reagan Administration demonstrated that the nation’s laws do not apply to the rich and powerful.  I will always believe that everything in human culture is driven top-down and that doubly applies for criminal behavior.  When the average Joe Douchebag saw that the people who run the federal government were unimpeded by any sort of ethics limitations and were filling their pockets with anything they could steal, he decided those same rules applied to him. 

 For more than 60 years, I thought the American Constitution was the closest thing to a sacred document, at least related to governments, that humans had ever created.  Then, I read it cover-to-cover several times in 2013 and 14, when I was trapped in a New Mexico Campground with a broken Volkswagen camper. Even not considering all the lines drawn through slavery protections, it's not a very organized or impressive document. The Declaration of Independence, the thing we are supposedly celebrating today, is even more flawed. Ignoring the fact that the document only acknowledges that "all (white) men" are "endowed with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness," a good bit of this celebrated document embedded vicious racism in the origins of the country.  The declaration’s final complaint being that the king refused to protect the European invaders from ". . . the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions." The North American European invasion history that followed that document is best described as the largest, most ruthless, and blatantly racist genocidal campaign in human history. Add that to the lined-out provisions in the Constitution protecting and furthering slavery and we should probably be having a moment of silence rather than a raucous, drunken, fireworks-detonating celebration of 250 years of mortification and greed.

 That isn’t, of course, who we are today.  Instead, we are a nation divided and on the edge of another civil war.  Our federal government has been dumbed-down to accurately reflect the lowest-common-denominator in our culture.  After 250 years of trying to find the least-fit person to hold the office of Presidency, it’s hard to imagine moving that bar any lower.  Donny Trump’s rampant corruption, narcissism, mental deficiencies, and vile amoral behavior is a sad and scary reflection on who so many of our countrymen and women are today.  I don’t know about you, but I’m not celebrating this moment today.  I’m going to spend this day and evening at home with Ms. Day and my thoughts and hope that next year is better.  Or, at least, not worse.