Is joy and celebration going away in the USA today?

[Eric the Green]

(08-03-2022, 04:13 PM)JasonBlack Wrote:

(08-03-2022, 05:15 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: If people are crestfallen and guilt ridden because some people point out the problems in our country, that is ON THEM.

On one hand I agree with this (I have been calling for , but on the other hand, if you want people to experience "joy and celebration", you shouldn't be surprised that that doesn't happen when the majority of social discourse is promoting precisely the opposite.

Quote:The thing to realize is to listen to the sixties/seventies musicians, and help them change the world. Listen to the song. The celebration of life is what we're talking about. People smiling, people touching, people dancing, slow rolling on bikes, balloons and arts and music. The 4th of July is just an occasion for what the song says can be every day. Nationalism is a poor symbolic substitute for real life.

And it's not a fight. But if you want to make it a fight, do it with gusto, and be sure you are fighting for the best causes. Not for your race or your nation, but for what gives and preserves our lives. (and for those things about our nation, and about some other nations, that happen to do this)

Rick Steves recently showed me how many festivals Europe has, and they go back centuries. Some new traditions of celebration started up in the sixties. Mostly held by people against war. I hope they come back again.

but that's just it....Democrats IRL tend to be disrespectful and blame game-y too. It is as you say, this is about "real life", not disagreements on policy.

I will grant you that, in most other contexts, this would be an appeal to emotion, but in this instance, promoting the right kind of emotions is precisely the point.

It depends on what you mean by social discourse promoting precisely the opposite. Circumstances that have happened because of our assault on Nature promoted by neoliberal conservatives, like pandemics, exploding disasters, and so on, require conscious liberals to say "stay safe" instead of "have fun." There is the exaggerated fear of sexuality that has grown up around the sexual harrasment and assault issue as well as diseases like AIDS and now monkeypox. Touching others is now as forbidden as it once was in the conformist society of the 1950s or the Victorian era or almost as bad as in many supposedly Muslim countries. 

So, to some extent, I am just feeling it's too bad it's this way. It is not so easy to have celebrations in the park when we are so polarized. And when everything is so expensive. When costs for property and security shut everything down. And I point my finger at neoliberalism for the expensiveness. Whether I am right about that, you can debate me. The contentious attitudes exist on both sides, no doubt. This celebration would be more possible though without the real threats to our safety that happen today. That's the irony and the point about the 4th of July in this song. On the same date and same location alluded to in this song, the celebration was ruined by an AR-15, without which the young maladjusted kid could not have killed anyone. And it is ruining the joy of life everywhere, and for everyone. And sad to say, you support this.

Nationalism is not the right kind of emotion. It is a substitute for real life, is what I said. It is the policies that are worth promoting, and with some passion too, and which are resisted because of appeals to slogans, symbols, emotions, fears and identity divisions, mostly by the right wing that now controls the Republican Party.

And by the way, if "nationalism" is linked to racism today, that is probably mostly because racists call themselves nationalists, or white nationalists. And it's true you could probably go back to black groups too in the sixties who referred to "black nationalism" to promote greater power for black people.