The Big Picture – 
By Glynn Wilson –

WASHINGTON, D.C. — As people in the United States get ready to find some way to celebrate the Fourth of July again after a reopening of sorts from last year’s shut down in the hellscape year of 2020, I can’t help but find myself wondering: Has American patriotism suffered a fatal blow?

Patriotic Independence Day editorials in American newspapers are a relic of the past, just like the printing presses they were printed on.

The novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19, which killed as many Americans as died in the Civil War, didn’t kill it.

It could be argued that Donald Trump did, along with his mixed up crazy followers who perpetrated the horrific attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.

The incongruity of seeing flag waving domestic terrorists attack the very Capitol they purported to be fighting for may have just been too much for the average human imagination to process.

What flag can you fly in a campground anymore when Democrats and liberals would just assume you are with Trump and his anti-government militia gang if you fly a version of the American flag?

Right-wing Republicans with authoritarian tendencies had already tried to co-opt the symbols of American democracy like our national flag, just like the fascist Nazis did in Germany with their flag before we kicked their asses in World War II.

But even before Trump won his fluke election in 2016 by firing up tens of thousands of disgruntled misfits to show up at the polls who had never voted before, the fervor for the holiday was already on the wane. It had already become just another capitalist advertising opportunity to sell gas guzzling cars and other environment killing merchandise.

It had already become politically incorrect to exalt “founding fathers” like Thomas Jefferson, for example, due to a fallacious revisionist history that has come to discredit his entire life and works because he owned and fathered children with slaves.

Related: The Jefferson Memorial and Legacy at Monticello

Speaking of cancel culture, there are some in this country who would not just take down and dismantle statues of Confederate traitors, which should be done by the way. I was the first to point out that the statue of Robert E. Lee in the Capitol should be removed from Statuary Hall.

Related: Why is Robert E. Lee’s Statue in the U.S. Capitol Not Yet the Subject of Controversy?

A photographer at The Washington Post literally argued with me about that on Facebook. I guess he’s not arguing anymore, since Congress voted this week to remove them all.

But some of the activists who want all these statues removed would also take down the ones celebrating the American Revolutionary period, even though it was that Revolution that set the stage for freeing the slaves. Yes, it took another 100 years and a Civil War to do it, and another 100 years and a civil rights movement to implement it.

Perhaps it would be more acceptable to talk about John Adams, who didn’t own slaves, but these days nobody knows or cares who he was either. The past may be prologue, but not if nobody remembers. There is a spoof of a movie now on Netflix called “America: The Motion Picture” that so distorts and makes fun of American history that I had to turn it off after only a couple of minutes of trying to watch it last night. Maybe we deserve this after everything that’s happened, but I can’t watch it.

The story of Adams and Jefferson both dying on the Fourth of July on the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence just seems so distant and quaint in these trying times, when the future of democracy itself is being called into doubt — and life on Earth seems ever closer to the End of Days in part because of the global pandemic, along with the disasters occurring all around us due to global warming and climate change.

Even fireworks themselves are considered dangerous now, which could start fires. To quote the famous letter from Adams saying the holiday “ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more,” is met with scorn, even though this White House and the National Park Service will continue the tradition anyway down on the National Mall. I doubt many people will show up or even watch it on cable TV.

Independence Day Fireworks From Washington, D.C.

There are good people on Facebook suggesting with memes that a better investment than fireworks would be buying pet food for a local animal shelter for stray dogs and cats. Hey, I’m all for helping the poor animals. I adopted one myself a few years ago. But I named him Jefferson — and took him to Monticello.

Related: The Jefferson Memorial and Legacy at Monticello

I just think a great country and a great holiday deserve a little something more than that.

Last year, when I was hiding out from the coronavirus in rural North Carolina, I picked up some fireworks from a local shop and fired off a few at dark. We ate plant-based food instead of barbecue, and watched the socially distanced, Zoomed-in “Capitol Fourth” show on PBS, wondering what was going to become of our country and our world in the months to come.

We have come a long way to getting back to something resembling normal now, although the world will never be quite the same.

This year, back in the nation’s capital region for the Fourth, we won’t be going downtown in the subdued crowd or shooting fireworks in the suburbs, which are highly illegal here. But we will be cooking out and consuming good barbecue and beer, from the 21st Amendment Brewery’s IPA variety pack. I imagine we will have a toast to American independence, freedom and liberty — even if it has been tainted by the events of the past year.

Thank dog we don’t say “God Save the King” on these shores.

Better yet, thank the French.

I don’t know how much longer it will last.

This will be my first toast.

“Vive la liberté.”

For an encore, how about this?

“Putain d’atout,” roughly translated: “Fuck Trump.”

Related: Siege at Yorktown Reveals Real Story of American Independence