The tone of the Fourth of July this year, as a public holiday, seemed to have be set well by the open mike singer at Doe Bay who sang about his experience at the Seattle riots. For his second number, he performed a bombastic falsetto adaption of America the Beautiful, ostensibly with his own lyrics, ones reflecting his sentiments regarding the nation that were in line with his political beliefs. It was quite a hoot to listen to him.
All in all, perusing the news headlines and Facebook posts that day, I couldn't help feeling like the Fourth is now nearly dead as a concept. It no longer has any official meaning, at least on the level of the national media and the federal government. It has become a legacy holiday, joining other dead holidays such as Labor Day and Memorial Day as a day off from work to relax and fire up the barbecue, but containing little substance beyond that for most folks.
Anything emphasizing the founding of the Republic is now embarrassingly out of step with the times we live in and smacks of cultural insensitivity to those groups left out of the 1776 thing. The federal executive's own Facebook post that day pretty much summed it up what the holiday has become.
If the current trend keeps up, I predict that although the Fourth will remain on the calendar for the time being, eventually it will be dropped and replaced by a more appropriate mid-summer holiday that reflects the updated cultural sensibilities and the new model of social justice. I suspect Pride will emerge as the winner in that contest. It's an inclusive holiday we can all celebrate with the rest of world, with the blessing of the international community, without making anyone feel uncomfortable except for hateful reactionary bigots clinging to the past with their guns and Bibles. Just make sure that you stand up and clap heartily when the parade goes by.
On this now-diminished pseudo-celebration of America's racist/hateful/sexist/cissexist/misogynist/genocidal/homophobic so-called "Independence," Red and I found ourselves, along with the rest of her family, decamping from Doe Bay and heading back along the winding narrow island roads towards the Orcas Island ferry terminal.
But whereas the rest of her family were bound for the boat back to Anacortes and the mainland, so that they could catch their flights at Sea-Tac, the two of us of waited a few extra hours in Doe Bay and instead caught the later inter-island ferry to Friday Harbor on neighboring San Juan Island.
As the largest town in the islands, Friday Harbor is the unofficial capital. Coming up to the dock, one could see the streets of the bustling downtown along the slope of the hill in the small cove. It felt like being back in civilization again.
But we spent only a single night there. We checked into the little motel I'd booked online several months back and in the evening we had fish and chips in a nautical themed restaurant down by the waterfront. Of course there was evidence of the dying holiday still about---folks of bulging overfed frame dressed in garish red, white and blue shirts and shorts, as if proclaiming that wanton gluttony and sartorial slobbitude is the ultimate freedom derived from the events in Philadelphia over two centuries ago.
And there was a solitary mobile float of a benevolent Uncle Sam parked down by the ferry terminal. It tottered down the main street comically as we were strolling past the boutiques. Although he is a white male (ugh), Uncle Sam is still sanctioned in a our new postmodern culture because he represents the benevolent Federal Government, the regent on earth for bringing social justice through the power to tax and to do All Things Considered as Good.
Back in our motel room we saw no local fireworks but heard the distant sounds of their explosions over the harbor, the receding echo of the corrupt disgraceful America that hopefully will soon no longer exist.
True to that spirit, in the morning we checked out the little motel and followed our plan from months ago. We fired up our legacy fossil-fuel burning vehicle and drove to the waterfront, where we parked in line for the morning ferry.
Our destination---a true land of freedom, ruled by a benevolent monarchy representing social justice and goodness bestowed through loving and gentle personal coercion, one where the rainbow flag already flies proudly and where the native tribes are not denigrated by the R-skin-word, but are elevated not only as "nations" but with the qualifier of being "First," lest anyone think otherwise.
From what I've heard at least, in this beautiful place where we were heading, gun ownership is frowned upon, and the will of the international community is considered to be the final word on matters of importance. Best of all, the hateful Christian Right which hangs on in the U.S. standing in the way of the Great American Transition to the New Just World Order has already been relegated to the margins of polite society---a pipsqueak voice that can be ignored.
It is truly a place that shows what America could have been, and still could be, had it not been for the Great Mistake of 1776.
In short, we were bound for Canada.
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