I’m going to start with a confession: I’m not a huge fan of the 4th of July.
I grew up in a military family. My father served in the Army for more than 20 years. Still, July 4th just wasn’t a big day for us. We’d get up early and go to the pancake breakfast hosted by a service organization in my little home town. Then we’d hang out until it was time to barbecue something for dinner. Once it got dark enough, we’d set off a few fireworks. (But only a few. Fireworks, in my dad’s estimation, were dangerous and a waste of money.)
Mike and I went to the big public fireworks displays when we were first married, and we took our kids to those events some years later. There was no way we would have let our children set fire to handheld explosives. Call me overprotective, but my adult children still have all their digits. I consider this a parenting win.
Today’s very unsentimental Five for Friday is devoted to some of the things that drive me crazy about the way we celebrate Independence Day in the United States. In no particular order:
Flag wearing. No doubt you’ve seen people wearing t-shirts printed with the stars and stripes. You’ve seen the flag embroidered into the back of a button-up shirt. God forbid you’ve seen flag shorts. The problem with all of this is that, as the U.S. Flag Code very explicitly states, “The flag should never be used as wearing apparel, bedding, or drapery.”
The flag code isn’t law–it’s a set of guidelines citizens are asked to follow. No one’s going to be arrested for wearing that flag shirt (or those shorts, although they’re definitely a crime against fashion.) Still, the people wearing those items are violating the very code developed to prevent the exploitation of a symbol they supposedly revere. I find this, shall we say, ironic.
Disrespectful flag displays. I have a neighbor who leaves his American flag on display 24/7 around the 4th of July, rain or shine. He does this in spite of the fact that he’s a former service member who should know better. The flag code has very specific rules about lighting and inclement weather.
I have another neighbor–also a former military member–who lines his yard with flags. They stay there night and day, usually for a week or more. The flags tip over, lay in the grass, get stepped on when they blow onto the sidewalk. I don’t think I eve need to explain why this is disrespectful.
If you’re going to display the flag as a symbol of the pride you take in your service to our country, then being openly disrespectful of its most visible symbol strikes me as just a tad bit hypocritical.
Crowd behavior. Crowds are pretty much unavoidable near the 4th of July. That’s one of the reasons my family never went camping on the 4th–crowds were the only thing my father hated more than shopping. And he really hated shopping.
It would be one thing if people remembered the “huddled masses” we welcomed into our country while navigating those crowds, but generally speaking, they don’t. They treat each and every human being as an impediment to getting what they want. Since this is an attitude that seems to carry on throughout the year, I find it particularly distasteful on the day we’re supposed to be our better selves and celebrate what the U.S. is all about.
Celebratory gunfire. I live in a part of the country where shooting guns into the air–both on New Year’s Eve and on July 4th–is very common. Every single year, there’s at least one news report about a child hit by a stray bullet on the 4th of July.
Does it simply not occur to people that there’s a thing called gravity? That those bullets going up will most certainly come down somewhere? I get that some folks want to celebrate their right to bear arms, but they can do this in a way that won’t potentially injure innocent people. Especially children, who rely on the adults of the world to demonstrate a little more common sense.
Fireworks. Americans celebrated the first Independence Day with a very rudimentary form of fireworks, which is how John Adams wanted it. However, he also thought the day should be marked as “the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty.” It’s probably safe to say that our fidelity to his vision has been thoroughly compromised.
Personal fireworks are just plain dangerous, as I’ve already noted. Thousands of people end up in the Emergency Room with injuries connected to their use. Public fireworks displays are often viewed as a solution to this problem, but they’re really no better. They pollute the air, leave behind chemical fallout, kill birds and freak out the domestic animals we’ve agreed to care for, start fires . . . the list goes on. Let’s just say that, at this point in my life, I’m decided that a few minutes of ooh and aah just isn’t worth the price we’ll all be paying.
Being a responsible citizen is never as much fun as drinking beer at the beach. As the John Adams quote above tells us, though, the 4th of July wasn’t designed to be a day of fun. It was meant to be a day when we’d contemplate the hard work and sacrifices required in creating a country where all people are created equal.
That work is nowhere near done. Somewhere between creating people and designing a political system that preserves their equality, we’ve fallen down on the job. This 4th of July, I plan to think about what I can do to fix that instead of sitting back and waiting for the fireworks to begin.
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