American Beauty
or, why leftists can still have a fourth of july party
I’ve been thinking a lot about America lately, as has probably everyone, considering it’s the 250th anniversary of its founding. Those I surround myself with, and many of you reading this newsletter, are likely not too hyped up about Independence Day, this year or ever. So many people — citizens, immigrants, and foreigners alike — are frustrated with, or even outright despise, the United States and all it stands for. As we all know, the government and moneyed interests are hostile to all who oppose their principles and policies, and historically have repeatedly asserted their dominance over minorities and other countries in unethical, and often downright genocidal, ways.
Five years ago, I covered a South Dakota-based Native American activist group’s Fourth of July protest in Rapid City for the paper I worked for at the time. The Fourth of You Lie March, organized by NDN Collective, started as a series of speeches imploring the city to publicly acknowledge the damage colonization has done to the Native American community and seeking policy changes related to local police’s targeting and brutalizing of the Native community.
“Today has always been an open wound…because today is not the celebration of the Declaration of Independence. Because we are those merciless savages they warned you about," Candi Brings Plenty, an indigenous justice organizer with the South Dakota Chapter of the ACLU, said at the march’s outset. "We are going to continue expressing our freedom of speech,” in order to remember the wrongs of the past and pave the way for a better future.
The march ended with a subset of protestors breaking away from the group and ascending a grain silo to hang an upside-down American flag reading “Land Back.” The police and their zip ties were not far behind, seeking to add a few more knuckles to the chorus of dozens of Indigenous incarcerated people who were beating on the narrow, thick-glassed windows of the Pennington County Jail as protestors chanted and prayed outside.
Now, I live in East Tennessee, a region of the country equally as dedicated to burying the wrongs of the past and bulldozing any chances for a better future as other conservative swaths of America. In the two years I’ve spent here for grad school, I watched my undocumented coworkers leave work early in fear that the ICE agents at the restaurant down the street would come to ours next. I saw pro-life billboards depicting graphic images of aborted fetuses installed in heavy-traffic areas of campus for days at a time, and witnessed street preachers yelling at LGBTQ students on the walkway that they are going to hell. I feared for my job when a professor at my university was fired for a Facebook comment she made after Charlie Kirk’s killing.
Given all the above, I am more than happy to engage with and participate in opposition to nationalist hegemony; I have done so in the past, and I will continue to speak out against injustice. But the Fourth of July, to me, has never truly been about patriotism, and I know many others dissatisfied with the nation we live in feel the same about the holiday. It is an ode to summer, a day to gather with family and friends to eat traditional foods important to our culture (burgers), launch little rockets into the sky (unfortunately also a favorite pastime of our military) while intoxicated, and watch uniquely American sporting events (Nathan’s hot dog eating contest). It is a day to come together with loved ones and community members in recognition of the one thing that binds us together, for better or for worse: this fucked-up country we live in. Well, maybe two things: we’re all here together, and we’re all disgruntled with some aspect of the state of contemporary politics and/or culture, though we differ on our feelings about them.
In another speech at the 2021 Fourth of You Lie March, Indigenous activist Muffie Mousseau reassured the crowd, “we’re always going to fight the fight. We want equality and equity for all people, we want racial profiling to stop, the racism, the discrimination. …You can’t right a big wrong, but…the Caucasian community needs to show respect to the Natives because we were here before anybody. And they need to start respecting us as human beings, which they don’t.”
Compared to many other countries and regions with long, storied histories, America’s blood-soaked 250 years are the human equivalent to a toddler — and we seem to be in our terrible twos. It’s debatable how much longer it will survive as a nation, or at the very least, how much longer it will be until our leaders drive the country into the ground and/or it fades in importance and influence on the international stage.
There are buds of promise, though. The long arc of history shows us that when people band together and rise up to challenge their oppressors, setting aside petty differences in deference to a greater cause, a better life for everyone is possible.
Because people are exhausted. It’s why some elected Trump, and it’s why some are, in response, electing socialist politicians like AOC and Zohran Mamdani and why candidates like Janeese Lewis and Melat Kiros won their primaries. It’s why labor unions are regaining momentum and support. It’s why people are opposing data centers being built in their communities and Flock surveillance cameras, and why entire cities are banding together to protect their immigrant neighbors when ICE tries to deport or disappear them. When I celebrate America, these things — these people — are what give me any sense of pride in my citizenship.
Today, I will be celebrating, but not in a more conventional way like I have done in the past. Instead, I’m gathering with a few close, queer friends to eat hot dogs, drink beer and cider, and watch a trans-themed double feature.
However you choose to observe the holiday, remember what the last 250 years of history have truly been like, rather than the myopic, propagandized narrative pushed by our government, and take some time to consider concrete steps you can take to help make this country a better place for all who inhabit it. And maybe eat a hot dog or two.