Liberty Where Hast Thou Gone?

Troubling times in in the US and I find myself strangely disconnected from all the July 4th celebrations, including the one I'm hosting at my own house. I know the reason lies in a gut-wrenching concern for the future of our nation. The great ship Liberty has been hijacked and a bunch of loons are piloting the ship. So I'm supremely ambivilent about the whole "Rah, Rah USA" thing. The current powers that be have so tainted the notion of what constitutes patriotism that it is vomitous to me to display my pride as I once did. I feel as though it were stolen from me. And that angers me more than anything.

So I put up my flag and I think about the guys who wrote the document that started it all. And I wonder, "When did the powers that be start treating the American people like morons?" The drafters of the Declaration and the Constitution and the Bill of Rights spoke to the people of high minded ideals and expected that they would understand the concepts. Today we have a president who cannot even pronounce "nuclear" correctly. Congress passes invisible bills and expects that no one will be any the wiser. Elected officials lie through their teeth, start phony wars, torture prisoners, secretly gather personal data, berate institutions who reveal their covert operations, and have the nerve to tell us its for our own good. Who are these people? How did we get here? And how can the American people except this behavior as right? How dare they treat us like a bunch of blithering idiots with no capabilities for deciding what is right and wrong? How dare they try to TELL us what those words mean?

Don't kid yourself into thinking that his country ISN'T embroiled in an ideological civil war. We are. And I suppose that in an of itself is liberty of a kind. But it kind of sucks to be celebrating your nation's birthday and feel embarassed about it.

Now I have to buy ice.