Celebrities Boycott 4th of July over Roe v Wade

[Eric the Green]

(07-05-2022, 11:25 PM)JasonBlack Wrote: https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/202...-v-wade-d/


For years, liberals have always said "you can be patriotic and still be willing to criticize your country". Something I always have, and still do, agree with. Thing is....boycotting Independence Day is not doing that. Boycotting Independence Day is saying that you hate your country, that you don't want to see your country's values prosper and that you want people to feel guilt for the way they live their lives. In other words, even if they had the most logical views in the world (and they clearly do not), any view they put forward is done in bad faith. Listening to someone like that is like asking someone who hates dogs how to run the American Kennel Club, a KKK member what policies would be best for the black community or an oil baron to talk environmental policy. 

I don't mean any disrespect here (this is addressed to liberals in general), but if this is really how you want to go about things, why the hell should anyone listen to you?

I boycotted Independence Day, but there's not much to do about it anyway. Go see fireworks? Have a picnic? Watch or join a parade? Big deal. Independence Day did not miss me. In another sense, I did not boycott it.

This Independence Day is a Day to mourn the state of my country. Even on this very Day it is desecrated by yet another outburst of our national plague: gun massacres and a congress and public that allows them. It perhaps has never been this bad in our nation. It was tougher, maybe, at a few other 4T times in the past, but the way things are headed, it will be the toughest too before long. 

https://youtu.be/bG_prCGBrcQ?t=121

The purpose of a holiday is to consider what it tells us that needs doing and remembering. This time, it is a day for prayer, and for protest. We have a Supreme Court that is appointed by madmen for life, and poised to overturn everything of value in the law, and has started doing that. We have a gerrymandered congress that favors a fascist party, and a voting public that might make things even worse this November, and which "disapproves" its president just because he mumbles a few words and because some things are going badly in some ways because of previous presidents and congresses that enabled neoliberalism and prejudice.

I agree with Colin Kaepernick and his protest against police violence by taking a knee during the national anthem, and I agree with him that Black Lives Matter. I deplore the way he has been treated by our fake president and the NFL. I agree with protests over the end of Roe v Wade. I agree with protests like the School Strike led by Greta Thunberg and many kids in the USA too about climate destruction and pollution, and with Bill McKibben. I am a fan of David Hogg and the Parkland kids working for gun control. These are among my heroes. Our country has had heroes in the past too, like Tom Paine, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Mother Jones, Rachel Carson, John Muir, Martin Luther King Jr, historians like Howard Zinn; there are a lot of Americans like these worth celebrating.

Hating my country? The whole idea is pretty silly. Even the idea of a country to love or hate is a bit artificial. I am a citizen of the world. It wasn't always so, probably, but my country is now the worst in the developed world by far. It has the most inequality and the most social and health problems among any of the OECD countries. It needs a powerful citizens' movement to change it. Does that mean I "hate" it? I would love to be proud of my country, but I am first and foremost a Citizen of Planet Earth. I want to see a world federation, and an end to nationalism. In a federation, constituent localities like nations, states, cities, counties etc. have their place and their limited sovereignty. I would love to be proud of my country, and just as much to appreciate other countries in a world of all one people on one revitalized Earth, our unique home.

https://youtu.be/HvD0TgE34HA?t=1800