“Tis it’s the 4th of July. Another June has gone by, and when they light up our town I think what a waste of gunpowder and sky.” Aimee Mann, 4th of July.
The 4th of July fell on a Sunday and the town of Leslie Georgia, population 500 or so, threw a party at the pool. We had a contest involving a watermelon smeared with Vaseline, one team of kids trying to get it to one side of the pool and another trying to move it in the opposite direction. We had innertube races and I got robbed of that victory. And the lifeguard poured some gasoline in the water, set it fire and dove through it from the Life Guard’s stand.
Then a few Roman candles and sparklers were lit, we ate the watermelons, and as the sun sank low in the sky, everyone went home or to another party.
“It’s one of my faults that I can’t quell my past
I ought to have gotten it gone,” 4th of July, Aimee Mann.
Gerald Ford was President of the United States, and no once really spoke a single word about him all day. There was a party in Washington DC, everyone had a great time, and no one was waving a flag with Ford’s name on it. The National Mall of full of people, and Philadelphia had a lot of tall ships in the harbor. It was an epic day for America. I know the pool party doesn’t seem like much, but the whole day felt different. We were living in historic time, but the day was important for the nation as a whole, and we felt it.
I haven’t felt it in a while. After reading, “In the Garden of Beasts” by Erik Larson, I haven’t felt the same. The idea American’s would invest so much of their emotional well being in one man is, to me, unbelievable. I never thought after so many civilizations have fallen because of one ruler who led them all to ruin, voters would be smarter.
And it’s the one thing I thought we had learned from the fall of Richard Nixon. I thought after Nixon we would know better than to trust a man that morally bereft.
Yet here we are.
American voters have to step off the treadmill of party politics. There is no Left, or Right. There are words invented to divide. There are no Republican or Democrat voters, only American voters. There is no one in office who is held accountable by the voters until the voters decide they’ve had enough of two sides of the same coin.
You do not donate enough to their reelections for them to care about you.
Unless you start voting them, all of them, out, and electing candidates you actually know something about. And that something would be where they get their money.
At some point, Ford, who also served on the Warren Commission that determined the cover story in the JFK assassination was true, decided to pardon Nixon.
I wonder if some sort of deal had been struck, and I wonder if we will see that happen again soon. It won’t matter. As long as there is big money in buy votes, the voters will be slaves to that money.
Take Care,
Mike
