July the 4th be with you

            It’s America’s birthday today! Unless you count the day the Revolutionary War actually ended as America’s birthday.  Or when the Constitution was drafted.  Or when it was ratified.  Whatever.  Who am I to judge if your birthday is the day you pooped for the first time instead of the day you were born.

            But a country’s birthday is different from a person’s birthday.  If I were to go to a friend’s birthday party where everyone was trying to have a good time and said “hey, so happy birthday and stuff, but just yesterday you said some really uncool things to my friend Janice, and I think you should apologize.  And remember when you were a kindergartner and we caught you throwing sand at the other kids for no reason? That really wasn’t okay.  You fuck up a lot” I would probably be considered rude, even though Billy is totally a shitbag and those other kindergarteners didn’t do anything.  Yet all the “news” I’ve been reading today, both from friends and from the world, hasn’t exactly been the most America positive.  People bring up the various shitty things our country has done, asking us not to forget about them.  One of the guys from Opie and Anthony turned out to be a racist piece of garbage, and the people that aren’t outraged over his horrible racism are outraged that people are outraged over his horrible racism.  A cheerleader shot a bunch of endangered animals for basically no reason.  The war on sex is ramping up as people argue their right to force people to adhere to their superstitions override the right to not poop out a baby every time they want to have a little fun.

            And I’m really, really glad this is the news I’m seeing instead of a bunch of “golly gee, America sure is great” stories.  There are many things I dislike about America, but one thing I genuinely admire about our country is how we readily acknowledge and try to move past our mistakes.  At first glance, we might seem fucking terrible at this.  We keep electing Republicans, for one thing, and despite three terrible kicks to the balls, we lined up to see the new Transformers, as though we can’t live without the delicious ache.  But when you consider our history, and how consistently we’ve tried to reverse some of the horrible shit we’ve done, it’s pretty remarkable.  We had a weak, ineffective government that couldn’t do anything, so we replaced it with a new one that was still, by the time’s standards, vaguely democratic.  We transitioned power between contentious rivals without chopping anybody’s heads off.  Black people went from being property to being able to vote in less than a century; gay marriage changed from a fringe position to a right accepted by the majority in less than ten years.  We only had one Civil War, and while it was really bad, it isn’t still happening now.  The history of other countries, countries that had thousands more years than we did, is almost Sisyphean in nature, going back and forth between almost making progress and hundreds of years of murder because one inbred guy was rude to another inbred guy.  We’ve backslid at times, yes, but never for more than a few years.  For the most part, we’re always getting better, and that’s genuinely remarkable.

            That said, it’s crucial that we don’t get smug about it.  That’s the reason why I’m glad that America’s ugliness is out in the open, especially on the Fourth.  We still have a long way to go before things are even remotely okay.  The institutions of racism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia are still entrenched in our society, and need much more work until they’re completely uprooted.  Our treatment of the indigenous people we stole this land from is shameful.  Oligarchs are determined to find out exactly how much they can take from everybody before they can upgrade from Ferraris to Tumbrels.  Too many people are more interested in regulating vaginas instead of corporations.  They’re remaking Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and the turtles have human lips.

            But despite that, despite all the ugliness and backwards thinking that still runs rampant in our country, I have hope that the good guys will win.  Because in the United States, the good guys eventually win, and sometimes it doesn’t even requiring beheading anybody.  Now I’m going to celebrate my descent into simpering, overly optimistic pap by watching Independence Day and eating hot dogs.