America's Last Birthday
Yesterday, according to the accepted method of counting years, America turned 248 years old. As a long-time advocate of the Constitution and an Eagle Scout (did you know?), I’ve always been a supporter of this nation. But blowing sh*t up to celebrate never impressed me as a way for a state to age with dignity.
Let me be clear: I hate fireworks.
There is, of course, a personal element in this disdain. I have excellent hearing, even as I advance toward my seventieth birthday, and the sounds are often painful. And, from days in my childhood house, I have a rather elaborate startle reflex, leading to extravagant spills and breakage when booms or flashes arrive in a delicate moment.
Mostly, however, I hate fireworks because of the damage done to many with no voice to protest or to protest loudly enough.
As often as knee-jerkers thank veterans for their service, many conveniently overlook the personal, permanent, and perpetual cost of that service to the years remaining to our veterans. Many return with damage to body and mind, so making one night a year a bombfest is a vain, gaudy show of disrespect to scars and sacrifices brought home. I thank veterans for their service every day by never exploding ordanance in the neighborhood.
Many survivors of war zones also come to America, and a celebration of freedom need not require reminding them of how far they’ve come and how short the distance Americans have come.
Our pets also suffer. Many routinely drug our dogs, cats, and various other pets to help them, huddled and shivering beneath beds in shuttered houses, through a gratuitous assault of bombs bursting in air.
Farm animals suffer, subjected to the barrage of noise and sparks. Wild animals suffer, having no natural awareness or protection from the ways and meanness of the single dummest species on the planet.
Our children suffer. Babies have no idea what is happening beneath our dim-witted displays of patriotism. Young children unexposed to adult glee in blasting are often horrified. Children already indoctrinated into the practice are endangered and encouraged to participate in ways resulting in injury, maiming, or death, not to mention, taught to disrespect everyone else’s right to peace and quiet in an annual, national glorification of gunpowder and stupidity.
The physically ill, mending from or enduring injuries, illness, and disease suffer. Quiet is actually and often necessary for many recoveries.
The mentally ill, in whatever frames of mind they exist, suffer. Considering the traumas most have already been subject to, gratuitously terrorizing them with our joy in noise and fire seems beyond cruel.
The aged suffer. Sitting by as the world explodes is no delightful way to spend the golden years.
The dying suffer. Think about that. Grandmothers and grandfathers, uncles and aunts, friends, neighbors, and children somewhere are actually dying on that day. That the last sounds heard are needless explosions, instead of the voices of loved ones in a quiet space, is an embarrassing proof against any real respect for life or freedom.
So for all of us, mostly still Americans, today anyway, let’s stop blowing the sky to smithereens on a day better spent in quiet meditation and serious thought, especially since these days, there seems so little to celebrate on July 4.
And by last birthday, let’s mean previous.