Rockets’ Red Glare: And The Flag Was Still There Edition
Jul 4th, 2009 | 6 responses
The flag was still there. And so are we Americans in the United States. We are a radical, radical people. It’s no wonder the world often says, Oh, Ach, Ay! Those Americans. We were not founded on fluffy words, but on blood-drenched ones.
Dont forget: We are still here, not by luck, but by hard-won “luck” in a mysterious land that often has wide margins for error, a self-healing fabric often, open wounds that still require medicine, and millions of hearts and hands and backs that still bend to try to bring to fruition the original vision of this North American Nation… which is actually a union of 50 nations with numerous sovereign nations of Native Americans within it.
That nearly 100 nations can survive each other, row the ships more or less together, even though sometimes in circles, it is an amazing miracle, a 233 year long event of possibilities, downfalls, upraising from the ruins, and unleashing incredible creativity and heartfulness anew.
So thus then…
For wherever needed in this wide world where people have to spend a month’s earnings on rice for one week, where self-appointed kings knife each other out in order to be ‘the only one,’ where elections are subverted, where just writers, humorists, teachers and holy people are tortured and imprisoned, where children have no chance to know the world or means of escape…… let these 233 year old words be a prayer for continuance, for ‘we the people’ of our nation and all other nations to continue to rise and rise and rise anywhere the score is Despot Shirts 62% vs The People Shirtless, Foodless, Powerless, Zero
We hold these truths to be self-evident,
that all men are created equal,
that they are endowed by their Creator
with certain unalienable Rights,
that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men,
deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…
That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends,
it is the Right of the People
to alter or to abolish it,
and to institute new Government,
laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form,
as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established
should not be changed for light and transient causes;
and accordingly all experience hath shewn,
that mankind are more disposed to suffer,
while evils are sufferable,
than to right themselves by abolishing the forms
to which they are accustomed.
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations,
pursuing invariably the same Object
evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism,
it is their right,
it is their duty,
to throw off such Government,
and to provide new Guards for their future security.
6 Responses to “Rockets’ Red Glare: And The Flag Was Still There Edition”
Traitors!
His Majesty King George III is going to get right pissed off about this.
thanks FatherTime, you made me laugh right out loud. That's a pretty good electroinic accent. lol
dr.e
I would sign that!
Yup, beautiful…………..Then come the corporations who hire a lot of lawyers and politicians to create a template that can be placed over the original at will, sometimes on a lark and sometime to underscore who is running the F____ing place. They don't change it drastically, but parse the words, diluting their original felt meaning. Truths? What and which ones? Equality?– for whom? Surely the framers never meant complete “liberty.” We can't give everybody “liberty” can we? If my financial “happiness” depends upon destroying all the mountains that have existed for centuries, well then I expect government help to secure that right.
But the government and the military would fight your right to abolish even if the people felt it was the right thing to do (like single payer health care-last reading 63% approve)………..should you take steps in this direction you would be labeled a domestic terrorist and shipped to a place where a confession would be extracted from you that, in fact, you are Castro's only son, and the woman tatooed on your arm is a demonic female version of Shiva, one who exists to destroy.
I bring this up at the July 4th barby, but conversation lags, no compatriots here………sidle over to fetch another beer……..and another…………and with the voice of Nina Simone crying and screaming in my ipod ears, I settle for the hammock and fall deeply asleep…………zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz There is a certain harmonic convergence here…………I am finally in tune with all the sadness of what it means but surrounded by apathy and denial.
There's something in the heart of many people dear Spirasol, that keeps veering away from despair and toward hope no matter what …many many rush to the other side when there is apathy/denial. I think of Aung in Burma among so many others; there are wins that dont show until one day…
just my two cents worth about lanternship/leadership in dark times
dr.e
dear sweetg, your comment was the brevity of wit. Thanks.
Odd isnt it, depending on who holds what kind of power with the upstarts, lots might sign today, right? But some might not. As I read our nation's history over these many decades, I see that who signed, who insisted, who literally risked their lives, depended on how much bloodshed they'd experienced firsthand, who they lost from their own circle in unjust executions. Occupation of colonies was by soldiers who did not spare bayonet nor shot. I think of others who rose us under similar conditions… some routed those who were sent to enforce pillaging and murder and draconian measures… such as the overthrow of Britain by India, some were instead captured and killed, such as the warsaw ghetto uprising against the Nazis with the Russian Allied forces right outside Warsaw waiting it out instead of joining in to help the Poles. Some came to a draw, rose up, fell back to another draw and another over decades, like Burma.
When you think of it… America's overthrow of the British king's yoke, is still startling. The American Revolution, a mish-mosh of Native Americans, illiterate farmers, black and Mexican and Caribe slaves, people of British blood who came on boats much earlier than the occupation, women with mustkets, men with origins in many Eu. nations in generations previous… and all led by men turned rough woolen greatcoat wearers, who were used to otherwise wearing silk breeches and hose…. amazing.