Hey Babe, It's the Fourth of July (Tomorrow)

The Phillies start the fireworks early, and my lucky daughter gets to see them from her stoop

I love the Fourth of July. I mean, what’s not to love?

OK, we’ll get that out of the way right up front: toxic patriotism. In all its varieties. Which we don’t need to enumerate because we know them all from having them forced on us, especially these bullshit days, right?

Right.

But also, we are more than that. Here is one of my favorite paragraphs I ever wrote - after 40,000 people peacefully counterprotested a pathetic alt-right rally in Boston in 2017 - and I still mean it, even as the moral arc of the universe bends so hard in the wrong direction, even as I despair at the news (fuck the Senate, fuck the House), even as we are so often our worst, and yet our best still keeps showing up:

So here's the thing about Boston: we are the best and the worst; we are the Revolution, the abolitionists, the peace movement; we are No Irish Need Apply, goring a black man with an American flag, the epitome of northern segregation. But what we really are is America, its best and its worst, its oldest families and its newest immigrants, its Tsarnaev family and its Richards family, its greatest strengths and its great weaknesses. And here's the thing about America: our best and our worst live in eternal tension, for we are founded in both the urge to freedom and the urge to enslave, and our history has flowed in a great tangle of those powerful urges, veering sometimes toward one, sometimes toward the other, but as often along the terrible combat of the two. I don't know if the moral arc of the universe bends toward justice, I really don't, but I do know that so long as we keep showing up for justice, peace, and freedom for all, those principles will not die. Today Boston showed up as its best, and it was an honor and a joy to stand against racism with so many of my neighbors of all races and backgrounds.

So, yeah, I’m not one of those people talking about whether to leave the country and where to go. You know most of those people are all talk, right? Unless you hang out with tech oligarchs or digital nomads, which I don’t, being too poor for the one and too old for the other. And there are certainly great reasons to go: if you are trans or have a trans child, if your research has been stopped and you can do it somewhere else, if you are a threatened immigrant (i.e., not white) and have had enough, if you have another great reason, even that you just want out, then absolutely, good for you, do what you need to do.

But this is my country. Right now it sucks so badly. But the people I know mostly don’t suck. And there are lots more people all over the country, in every single state and I’d venture to say every single town (having lived in one of those towns), who don’t suck either. And I am in a very fortunate position - white, well off, in Massachusetts, just to start - so I’m going to stay and try to do my best, whatever that turns out to mean.

BUT, THAT IS NOT WHY I LOVE THE FOURTH OF JULY. I love the Fourth of July because it is no religion, no enforced rituals, no tension, no drama, just SUMMER! Beaches! Lakes! Boats! Parades! Fireworks! Sparklers! Ice cream! Lemonade! Watermelon! A clam boil if you’re lucky! Or whatever you all eat if you’re not in New England on the Fourth of July! It’s singing patriotic songs, which I like to do because I know the words and they are fun to sing! And yes, that includes “This Land Is Your Land” with the No Trespassing verse, of course!

I’ll be honest, I had great childhood Fourth of Julys that primed me for great adult Fourth of Julys, and I truly cannot think of a bad Fourth of July I’ve ever had.

OK, that is a lie. I can think of one. 1976. The Bicentennial. Tall ships in Boston. My family was going to be out of the country at the beginning of the summer, and I insisted we had to come home for the Fourth of July. Which we did, the day before, and then I got sick, spent the entire Fourth of July in bed, and missed everything. That was a bad and sad Fourth of July, but it wasn’t the fault of the Fourth of July! Whereas a bad Thanksgiving is almost always the fault of Thanksgiving.

So, yeah, I’m excited for the Fourth of July. If you’ve been feeling unhappy about it, I hope I’ve hyped you up just a little. And if you’re also excited, I hope you’re happy to have company. Either way, I hope you find yourself a good time, or at least some ice cream.

---

The Way We Live Now

A bit of follow up to last week’s post.

1. I wasn’t satisfied with my mention of the antisemitic violence in Washington and Boulder, but I finally figured out how to say what I really wanted to say, which is this: Just as the actions of the terrorists who flew planes into the World Trade Center and Pentagon were the flames that lit the fuse of Islamophobia that motivated the attacks on people perceived as Arab and Muslim in the days and months after 9/11, so Israel’s actions in Gaza are the flame that lit the fuse of antisemitism that motivated the DC and Boulder attacks. It’s all wrong - the precipitating actions, the Islamophobia and antisemitism, the attacks on individuals who had nothing to do with the precipitating actions - but we do ourselves no favors when we don’t acknowledge the causality.

2. Someone who read last week’s newsletter thought I was leading up to talking about Zohran Mamdani, but he actually never crossed my mind. However, I do have something to say about him. Or rather, about the post-primary discourse. Which is that it is ridiculous to look for the solution to The Problems of the Dems in every single Democratic candidate who wins any kind of election. I think a lot about Jared Golden, the moderate Democrat who represents Maine’s 2nd Congressional District. He beat his Republican opponent in November by .5%; Trump beat Harris in his district by 10%. Golden does not vote like he’s from Massachusetts or New York City. He votes like someone who wants to represent his district and keep his job. Zohran is not his solution. He is his solution. Politics are still local. Voters in different places and circumstances still want different things. There’s no magic bullet for a country as big as this one, and the Dems need to realize that and find a way to make it a strength. Unfortunately, I don’t have a lot of hope in their current institutional capacity to do thoughtful hard things (or much of anything at all).

Book(s) of the Week

First, I must sadly report that I did not love Spent, Alison Bechdel’s new (and first) (and autofictional but with goats and YouTube) novel, despite the extreme excellence of her book event. It was fun to be back with the Dykes to Watch Out For, and Bechdel still has a knack for capturing a zeitgeist. But the interesting money-and-politics premise she sets up never really goes anywhere, and while the book’s resolutions are meant to be heartfelt and meaningful, they felt predictable and tacked on to me.

However, I very much liked The Anthropologists. It was on Obama’s book list and lots of 2024 best books situations, so I may be telling you something you already know, but it is a small gem: calm, anxious (yes, both), abstract, deeply situated (yes, both), deep, enjoyable (yes, both). It’s about a couple living in a city in a country where their families do not live, trying to figure out how to live and whether to buy a house. That’s pretty much it and fully enough. Also I couldn’t figure out why it was so good - like Normal People, about which I said the same thing in my last post - and I always love that. So, yeah, good one.

---

Because we still deserve nice things…

You might have known where this was going.

The essential 4th of July song.

Fast (X) or slow (Dave Alvin, who wrote it and turned it into what it always wanted to be).

Says everything there is to say about loss and hope, and what else is this damn country?