Fourth of July Remarks For Any Occasion (in the form of notes for the platform speaker) Sunday, July 4, 2010
By Barry Crimmins
Listening to the following jingoistic inanities is a small price to pay on this sacred date so put down that breakfast pizza, America, and fork over your ears.
I commence by reminding you that as liberty-loving people, our obligation to challenge lethal humbugs is always superseded by our divine right as Americans to blissful ignorance as we stroll into the chute behind the other cattle. We must never forget this!
That said, holiday salutations iced with ham-handed implications that the rest of humanity is lacking our natural love of freedom and democracy!
And now, the main body of my address on this Fourth Day of July in the year of our patriarchal lord, 2000 and 10
As Americans, we sometimes forget that the rest of the world looks to us and holds us in awe as a nation because of our unique ability to take a history including:
-- Genocide against those who made the mistake of living on this land before God led us to it...
-- Human enslavement of the labor needed to build and grow our greatness...
-- Codified bigotry against even our own mothers as well as anyone who might be in any way identified as different…
-- Robber baronry and the heinous exploitation of immigrants so that wealth could be evermore concentrated among the few...
-- Police state oppression applauded as freedom protection...
-- Militarism beyond the bounds of any of the great and terrible nations that have proceeded us into richly-deserved oblivion...
-- A democratic process in which only the dollar sign speaks, no matter how many of us bleat at the polling place...
and somehow translate them into the idea that this is the one chosen and truly exceptional nation. No small task, when you stop and think of it -- but usually we're too busy frolicking in our blessings to take the time to appreciate just how wondrous we are. That's why on this day of days, we are obliged to pause, reflect and offer our thanks for our great good fortune to have been born, or legally naturalized (and we're all for that!) in this land of lands.
Furthermore, semi-sincere but roundly illiterate respects to our ancestral war dead -- but only OUR war dead. A big but completely phony bow to our contemporary cannon fodder, laden with an enormous whopper about how our troops are protecting our freedom in neighborhoods that our freedom has never once frequented.
Continued remarks about how we wouldn't be able to play golf or even go to a mall this morning without our supported dupes' absolutely needless sacrifice in inordinately far-flung places. Places where the locals have learned that, to Americans, appreciation for democracy can only come at the cost of the arms, legs, eyesight, mental health and even the lives of countless innocents whose only prior crime was to have never thought of our nation in any terms, at all. But now they know us, thanks to the, at times, literal human sacrifice of our very children to a heartless yet absurdly self-righteous foreign policy that is enforced by retaliation against almost anyone who makes the mistake of passing through somewhere, where someone we really hate might also pass through at some point.
That's what makes us different from the terrorists.
In closing, God Bless America and our troops and drones. Eat plenty of hot dogs, they're really good for you!
Listening to the following jingoistic inanities is a small price to pay on this sacred date so put down that breakfast pizza, America, and fork over your ears.
I commence by reminding you that as liberty-loving people, our obligation to challenge lethal humbugs is always superseded by our divine right as Americans to blissful ignorance as we stroll into the chute behind the other cattle. We must never forget this!
That said, holiday salutations iced with ham-handed implications that the rest of humanity is lacking our natural love of freedom and democracy!
And now, the main body of my address on this Fourth Day of July in the year of our patriarchal lord, 2000 and 10
As Americans, we sometimes forget that the rest of the world looks to us and holds us in awe as a nation because of our unique ability to take a history including:
-- Genocide against those who made the mistake of living on this land before God led us to it...
-- Human enslavement of the labor needed to build and grow our greatness...
-- Codified bigotry against even our own mothers as well as anyone who might be in any way identified as different…
-- Robber baronry and the heinous exploitation of immigrants so that wealth could be evermore concentrated among the few...
-- Police state oppression applauded as freedom protection...
-- Militarism beyond the bounds of any of the great and terrible nations that have proceeded us into richly-deserved oblivion...
-- A democratic process in which only the dollar sign speaks, no matter how many of us bleat at the polling place...
and somehow translate them into the idea that this is the one chosen and truly exceptional nation. No small task, when you stop and think of it -- but usually we're too busy frolicking in our blessings to take the time to appreciate just how wondrous we are. That's why on this day of days, we are obliged to pause, reflect and offer our thanks for our great good fortune to have been born, or legally naturalized (and we're all for that!) in this land of lands.
Furthermore, semi-sincere but roundly illiterate respects to our ancestral war dead -- but only OUR war dead. A big but completely phony bow to our contemporary cannon fodder, laden with an enormous whopper about how our troops are protecting our freedom in neighborhoods that our freedom has never once frequented.
Continued remarks about how we wouldn't be able to play golf or even go to a mall this morning without our supported dupes' absolutely needless sacrifice in inordinately far-flung places. Places where the locals have learned that, to Americans, appreciation for democracy can only come at the cost of the arms, legs, eyesight, mental health and even the lives of countless innocents whose only prior crime was to have never thought of our nation in any terms, at all. But now they know us, thanks to the, at times, literal human sacrifice of our very children to a heartless yet absurdly self-righteous foreign policy that is enforced by retaliation against almost anyone who makes the mistake of passing through somewhere, where someone we really hate might also pass through at some point.
That's what makes us different from the terrorists.
In closing, God Bless America and our troops and drones. Eat plenty of hot dogs, they're really good for you!
