How Do We Celebrate Independence Day?
Tags: Human Rights, Independence Day, Politics, Equality, Culture

How Do We Celebrate Independence Day?

While our government commits human rights abuses on immigrants seeking independence

I will not be watching this president and his reality show hijinks and takes on Independence Day. Mr. Trump could not impress upon me all the pomp and circumstance scheduled that include tanks and flyovers planned for the day. Rather, it will be a solemn day of reflection and introspection about this enduring guilt by association sentiment that proffers this uneasy American identity crisis for me and for a whole host of other Americans.

A much more significant portion of the population grapples with this identity crisis because of the moral and ethical (crimes) lines this administration has crossed with the debased treatment of immigrants, who are in fact seeking to share in the same kind of independence, detained at overcrowded facilities near and around the border. The conditions they face are deplorable as the Trump administration has effectively criminalized immigration from so-called “shit-hole countries”.

The absurd appeasement and reverence shown to authoritarian despots around the world, and the thoughtless fabrications every time the president addresses the public is demoralizing to the independence that is assumed being celebrated here.

If your raciality (or ideology borne from whiteness) finds it necessary or funny to politicize this matter, or if this Trumpian display of callousness ingratiates you into acting indifferent because it insulates the unearned privilege and undeserving entitlement of your racialization, then your introspection and reflection conjures nothing but a motivated lack of self awareness.

The dynamics of which are steep in moral lapses and dehumanizing disregard for humans like (yourself) ourselves who appreciate the democratic ideals of independence. The support and indifference granted to Trump, whether it is in the copious benefit of the doubt implanted in his presidential defense, or in the undying loyalty to the tacit white supremacy cause, gives him license to feel even more omnipotence to overshadow the incompetence he truly exudes.

omnipotence: when someone feels so aggrandized and entitled that they believe the rules of decent behavior don’t apply to them. — hbr.org

Which leads to this underwhelming sense of American pride driven by a stream of consciousness that lulls you into cultural numbness proffered by the two major political parties that we ultimately have to choose from. Since winning is everything here in the United States with its assumed socioeconomic consequences of begetting life, liberty , and the pursuit of happiness, we simply play along with willful blindness of the fact that we have long ago lost our way.

cultural numbness: when others play along and gradually begin to accept and embody deviant norms. — hbr.org

Being lumped into this perversion of liberty and independence serves as cognitive dissonance. A negative result of which is seen in the justified neglect shown as pride in America no matter who is disorting that very same pride.

justified neglect: when people don’t speak up about ethical breaches because they are thinking of more immediate rewards such as staying on a good footing with the powerful.

And so the entire nation will dissemble before the fireworks display to salute and mark an occasion that wasn’t really about freedom and justice for all, its just more about moral capture. Independence Day was supposed to mean being free from the tyranny of human rights abuses, but self-awareness has long informed me that it is more about the inalienable right of ancestral colonialists and the intergenerational colonialism having been acculturated as pride. It is an ideology that imposes its insensitive beliefs and motivated ignorance on the guilt by association of many Americans besieged by the pomp and circumstance of our invisibility and their hierarchical maintenance.

The transparent cover that many white americans use to hide under even when the evidence of everyday privilege and advantages are preserved, protected and utilized still should leave them appearing cold and uncomfortable.

I guess we don’t really hold these truths to be self-evident, that not all men are created equal, especially women, that they are not endowed by their Creator only assigned by that Creator to serve the hierarchy, with no certainty assured of unalienable Rights, that is alleged to offer Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.