Good morning. Here’s your Fourth of July reminder that patriotism, jingoism, and nationalism exist to stoke the average person’s zeal for an abstract concept into a tool meant to be wielded in the oppression of others. There is no reason to love the USA — it was built on slavery and genocide, and the only halting steps it has ever taken toward its professed ideals have been in response to direct action. It will not give us anything that we are not willing to shed blood and die for. This is evident throughout history, from the Civil War to the Haymarket Riots to the aftermath of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire to the to the utter revisionism of the country’s involvement in WWII to the Civil Rights Movement, and so on.
The United States of America is already a fascistic state built on slavery and colonial violence that has spent decades destabilizing countries around the globe and is currently in the process of dismantling its own norms so that it can pave the way for a more open form of the same. The Fourth Estate, already in a precarious position, has been openly co-opted by the very billionaires that keep the people in poverty. The carceral state (prisons) exist to maintain the very slavery that the country was built on, and the move to privatize it in the ’90s has only made the situation worse. The man responsible for that is currently serving a feckless term as President, performing the most artful pantomime of clumsiness while he somehow manages to deftly avoid making a real decision.
White people who believe that the Supreme Court’s recent actions undoing Roe v Wade was the first such egregious misstep have not been paying attention (specifically to Black people). This is not your Handmaid’s Tale moment, and if you think it is then you have been ignoring the rights of the marginalized for entirely too long, and that too plays into the hands of white supremacy. The United States is an empire, with all of the violent meaning that word carries, and it will come for you and those you hold dear. If you value the ideals of freedom in any way, embrace anti-racism, anti-fascism, and be ready to fight back. Direct action is the only way.
Or sink back into the haze of comfort that comes from the oppression of others and read about some comics news I guess. Hey, it’s these two guys’ birthdays!
What was I saying? Something about jingoism? I dunno. Anyway, later!
