Here’s how some people might think of today.
Here’s another legitimate perspective.
All true. But this is where my head is at.
Peace out, everyone. No fireworks please.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Happy landed freeman day!
You and I both old enough to remember how overblown the 1976 bicentennial was, I was nine at the time. I can just imagine how overdone it will be in 2026 if rightwingnuts are back in power. They’ll probably use a nuke instead of fireworks.
Every year, a lot of my Canadian friends on FB loudly refuse to celebrate Canada Day, because we’re a horrible country based on genocide. Then three days later, they gush on FB to wish their American friends a happy 4th of July.
I’ve met a few hardcore lefties who profess to celebrate “Revolution Day”. Wouldn’t want them running things.
How about mix of those points of view?
Of course, Trump is spending the holiday weekend the way he knows how… grandstanding and riling up his racist, jingoistic, trash supporters:
Donald Trump Blasts Radical Left for Trying to ‘Cancel’ July 4 Holiday
@4
You’ve met a few hardcore leftists who want to celebrate a Mexican holiday that commemorates the start of their revolutionary war? I mean… sure I guess. The US celebrates Cinco de Mayo more fervently than Mexico does, so I don’t see the harm. Kinda silly I suppose, but not hurting anyone. Not sure why you think that should disqualify them from running things, especially when the past 50+ years of center-right and right-wing leadership has lead us nowhere good.
kome @ # 4: … hardcore leftists who want to celebrate a Mexican holiday …
Nope, they just like to celebrate the concept of revolutions in general.
Not sure why you think that should disqualify them from running things…
Verbatim quote: “Stalin wasn’t that bad…”
@4 Perhaps they just want to get legless .
Oh America ,you could have become another Canada ,if only you had stayed in The British Empire .
@ 8
But that’s what May Day is for.
@10 Seconded
@Intransitive, I’m all for fireworks, nukes included, powered by Nitrowhisperin. ;)
I was 14, nearing 15 during the bicentennial. Perhaps it was the CO poisoning I was suffering from on Independence Day, perhaps it was the more progressive education in place at the time that taught history with warts and all, but the magical effect was lacking.
A year celebrating losing in a bluff designed to gain a seat in parliament, to bitch about a 0.5% tax being levied to cover the expenses of fighting a proxy war within their own colonies – colonies already getting all manner of preferential treatment. A bluff by only the wealthy elite, as the tiny middle class and poor would end up voiceless and paying in any event.
Now, a nation made mighty by leveraging a burgeoning middle class that mainly exists due to industrialization and the needs of two world wars and a national history replete with every generation experiencing a war. A nation designed to emulate the Roman Republic, which acts surprised when an orange Julius wants his own Rubicon to cross into Imperial legend.
Although, if were to pop the tab on a nuke, I’d target a cometary body coming in from the Oort cloud for an ablation study… With the pulse also acting as a radar ping for a light year or so radius.
If Canadians can compare their national day with yours, so can I…
Sweden did not have a national day, but in the early 20th century a national romantic wanted to make June 6th the day of the Swedish flag, the date chosen because that is when summer really gets going in Stockholm.
.
In the late 1970s this was promoted to “national day”, and the cause for the date was retconned to the ascent of King Gustav I (who took Sweden out of the union with Denmark). Eventually people recalled Gustav I was a tyrant, so a second retcon made the date be about a minor change of the constitution in the early 19th century, the mostest boringest reason ever for a national day.
But the “national day” never really took off. It has to compete with Midsommar, midsummer eve, a traditional, very deep-rooted holiday and June does not really have space for two big-ass holidays.
You might celebrate June 6th because of D-day, a perfectly good reason.
Myself, I have a brother with that birthday so it suits me fine.
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PS ‘Midsommar’ has nothing to do with the horror film with that title. That cult is purely fictional, real human sacrifice is limited to DUI crashes during the holiday.
We don’t actually care too much about losing you as a colony. Generally our appreciation for our former colonies hangs on the sorts of cuisine we managed to steal from them.
India gave us curries. The Middle East gave us kebabs. Hong Kong gave us tea and Chinese food. Even Ireland gave us Whiskey.
We can do without weak beer and cheese in a can.
Extra! Extra! Joe Chestnut, New York made a new world record today when he ate 76 hot dogs in ten minutes, thus honoring the national day in the most Merican way possible.
Love the sentiments, hate the song. Like Amerika itself, its modern music is boring, overrated, steeped in sex and drugs and just plain sick.
@ 13 cartomancer
The british have an odd way of showing appreciation to their former colonies.
Most countries celebrate/proclaim their national origin to start from the date that they, well, actually won that independence, or were formally founded. There are several candidates for that for the US (most prominently, Cornwallis’s surrender on 19 Oct 1781 and the resolution declaring that the Constitution, and thus “the United States”, was in effect on 13 Sep 1788), but 04 Jul 1776 is not one of them. That’s just the day that we oh so politely, with surprisingly readable handwriting, told the King to bugger off. We didn’t actually escape the playground bully and his minions for another five years.
So we’re weird. I guess you don’t have to be from Portland or Austin to be weird.
@kingoftown #16:
What? No, nothing odd at all. All quite normal.
Rich Woods @ 18
As a wee Swedish schoolboy in the 1970s I had heard of Kaunda and Zambia. The Oxford/Cambridge public school political class apparently exists to churn out useless tossers like this example.
And then we have Dominic Raab, a special case of Dunning-Krueger…
Mebbe Britain should follow the example of ancient Athens and appoint leaders by lot. There would still be a lot of gammons but none of them would be writing books about Victorian England that were full of errors.
Jaws @ 17
Sweden Norway and Denmark were not so much ‘founded’ as ‘congealed’. Petty kings went to war with each other as a very barbarian version of Game Of Thrones, until only a few, big domains remained. While writing (rhunes) existed at the time, no one bothered writing down which year this or that chieftain got his head cut off.
AFAIK countries younger than the US often have an “independence day” commemorating some arbitrary step in the independence process, while older countries tend to have a “national day” that may or may not point to some specific (real or mythical) historical event. Some countries have both, such as post-soviet Russia, which has a rather obscure independence day and a more popular “day of national unity”.
However, it is unclear to me if any of these modern commemoration traditions actually go back before ca. 19th century, or the establishment/popularization of US independence day. It could be that the US actually started the global fashion where countries all over the world inspired each other to formally grandstand their independence and/or national unity. Certainly, the US revolution did inspire modern nationalistic secessions, as well as popularization of modern democracy. I know historically some nations/empires did have a history based on their (usually mythical) founding soandso many years ago, but this may not have been commemorated on a specific day.
For anyone who’s interested: What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?
birgerjohansson (#12) –
That sounds like another Canadian thing. We view Victoria Day (last Monday in May on or before the 24th) as the unofficial start of summer. Grades K-12 are let out around that time. Prior to climate change, we’d take all the summer we could get, even if it was 15C.
re @17:
Yes, I agree it is weird to celebrate the anniversary of declaring our independence before achieving it, as Independence Day*. I too would rather we celebrate nationally the ratification of the Constitution, which is more like the actual date of our nation’s birth, than the date we sent a fuckoff letter to the king oppressing us.
re Cinco de Mayo:
Love how Mexicans shake their heads at us for celebrating it as the Mexican 4th of July, when it really is the anniversary of a single battle within their war of independence. Like the U.S making a national holiday of Bunker Hill Day, in honor of that battle.
/* on second thought, I guess that’s why it’s called Independence Day, When we decided to become independent.
My objection is actually when it is used as our nation’s date of birth, to calculate the age of this nation.
THAT is what needs to be the ratification of the Constitution: to say how old the USA is, not 1776
Not quite. Cinco de Mayo is separate from their independence from Spain. It commemorates their victory over the French Second Empire which was a powerful colonial force to reckon with. It’s a bit more important than a single battle.
13 cartomancer:
You seem to forgetting all of the good things Europe took from the Americas during the Columbian Exchange — corn, chocolate, tomatoes, potatoes and peppers.
While not really related to British and the US per se, Britain and its American colonies were a microcosm of the wider European colonization of the Americas.
Then again, these generally originated in the American tropics, and were introduced to Europe by the Spanish and Portuguese. That includes corn, beans and tobacco, which were widely cultivated by the natives in temperate North America.
Modern, somewhat popular food plants that originated at least partly in temperate NA include sunflower, girasole artichoke, squash, “wild rice”, pecan nut and the modern cultivated types of blueberry, strawberry, raspberry and blackberry. No domestic animals other than bison – even turkey was domesticated in Mexico.
Meanwhile, very little of actual Native North American cuisine seems to have influenced British-colonial food culture. AFAIK Mexican food is far more native influenced, and (as noted above) the Spanish got potato, corn, tomato etc. directly from their “own” colonies.
I forgot to list cultivated cranberry and some wild/domesticated fish, notably Alaska pollack and rainbow trout.
Do the British not eat hominy and succotash?
Even Canadians don’t eat hominy or succotash, and we live on the same continent. The only thing I know about succotash is that Sylvester the cat thinks that it suffers.
That seems fair. I know very few Americans who eat poutine. It’s almost as if people think you’ll die if you eat and aren’t Canadian.