...and think about what you’ve done.

Last Saturday was July 4th. Independence Day in the U.S. A day traditionally set aside for parades, barbecues, John Philip Sousa, patriotic bunting, and fireworks.

It has never been my favorite holiday. It’s hot, there’s too many wasps, the potato salad gets warm, and then to top it off you have to watch things blow up before you’re allowed to go to bed and write it off as a bad job until the next year. Not my idea of a good time, especially as I’ve suffered moderate to severe pyrophobia my whole life which makes any occasion culminating in gratuitous explosions rather a nerve-wracking experience. No, thank you. Hard pass.

And let’s face it, it’s not exactly like we have much to celebrate if you really break down current events. Hell, if you break down our entire history. We wriggled out from underneath Crazy George III’s thumb because we didn’t like the way we were being treated, and then turned right around and did the same--and worse--to anyone we didn’t like the look of. We’re living on stolen land, and we swept the original occupants as far under the rug as we could. We perpetrated the theft and imprisonment of people we deemed to be lesser than ourselves, and sold them like livestock to tend to our every whim. We’ve treated anyone we deemed inferior (which at this point is really anyone who doesn’t fill the WASP profile within a very slim margin) like garbage. We’ve treated our neighbors like garbage. We’ve treated the land we decided we just had to have like garbage.

We’re garbage human beings. Every single one of us. We descended from garbage human beings, and we seem intent on breeding more garbage human beings. And we celebrate this why? Because we somehow, despite all the evidence to the contrary, still believe we’re God’s gift to the world.

Personally, I think it’s humanity as a whole that is the root of the world’s problems, and if we could just get rid of people the world would be better off. Yeah, I’m actually kind of rooting for Coronavirus in that sense. I mean, maybe it will at least get rid of some of the most garbagey humans and leave some moderate-to-completely decent folks behind who can try to sort things out and improve going forward?

I’m not holding my breath, though, because if we’ve learned anything from history it’s that no matter how good the intentions, everything eventually turns into a raging shitstorm anyway.

So maybe instead of celebrating our inflated opinion of our own importance, we ought to take stock of how we can at least attempt to improve as a species--with particular emphasis on the über-patriot, ‘Murica-drawling, bigoted-as-fuck, pig-ignorant set.

I think slipping a little cyanide into their warm potato salad ought to do it.*

Here’s some programs and organizations doing good work in an attempt to balance out the bullshit:

RAICES: To get children out of cages. (Yeah, they’re still in there.)
https://www.raicestexas.org/

NDN Collective: To empower Indigenous People.
https://ndncollective.org/

The Black Infant Health Program (this one is CA-only, see your local authorities for something similar):
https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CFH/DMCAH/BIH/Pages/default.aspx

Black Mamas Matter Alliance:
https://blackmamasmatter.org/

NAACP Legal Defense Fund:
https://www.naacpldf.org/

Center for Policing Equity:
https://policingequity.org/

Cesar Chavez Foundation:
https://chavezfoundation.org/

Do with this information what you will.


*No, I’m not actually advocating murder. Much as it might help. DON’T KILL PEOPLE. EVEN GARBAGE PEOPLE. IT’S NOT NICE, AND IT MAKES YOU GARBAGE PEOPLE.