Independence Day

While browsing the Twitter trends as the clock ticked to 12:01 AM and July 4th, 2009, I was sadly not surprised to see a plethora of "Happy Independence Day's" interspersed with plentiful nationalist sentiment from my American cohabitants. Not exactly a nation to shy away from nationalism, I was nevertheless a little dismayed to see so many people conflating a celebration of independence with xenophobia, arrogance and ignorance.

I wanted to say something - anything - to point out the innate hypocrisy of a nation celebrating independence and freedom while at the same time carrying out acts of war in other countries around the world in name of said freedom. The recent TV series, Kings - unsurprisingly prematurely cancelled - showed promise in highlighting the contradiction of a nation celebrating freedom yet embroiled in war; its absolute monarchic state - which Independence Day celebrates jettisoning - an ironic metaphor for the presidential state of the USA.

But I couldn't say anything. As much as I wanted to, I felt it would be too cynical of me to rain on America's parade.

Instead, I offer the words of someone far more articulate: Stephen Fry. Here, he summarizes the contradictions and hypocrisies of the land of the free, while at the same time sharing, as I do, an admiration for it's people and their belief in hope.

"So what is quintessentially American? Apple pie or Apple computers? Walmart or Wall Street? Trump Towers or Twin Towers? Jimmi Hendrix or Jimmy Stewart? Opportunity or opportunism? Small town courtesy or small-minded bigotry. Hearty milk and cookies or Harvey Milk and hookers. Blue collars, red necks, white supremacy or black power? The Simpsons or The Waltons, Family values or Family Guy, Holly Golightly or Hollywood, Penn State or the State Pen or Sean Penn, the right to life or the right to electrocute, capitalism or capital crimes, poncey dreams or Ponzi schemes, Nobel prize winners or ignoble price fixers, a country that can land men on the moon and yet has a majority who believe that angels walk amongst us – I suppose we could play this game of opposites for ever for I do not know a single thing that can be said about America whose reverse is not also true. It is a land of opportunity and yet there are more seventeen year old black youths in prison than in college. It is a land of freedom where in many states you can’t buy fireworks or alcohol or cross the street as a pedestrian where you please and where children’s books are banned and educational material suppressed if they do not square with some religious dogma or other. It is a land of church-going traditionalists and a land of freaks and fancies. A nation founded in revolution where radicalism is next to Satanism. A land of industry where indolence has created an epidemic of obesity whose walking examples, or waddling examples I should say, have to be seen to be believed. One country riven by a depth of mutual bipartisan enmity, loathing and distrust that threatens entirely to divide it into two and propel the nation into a new Civil War. However much Britain may be divided along tribal lines, it is as nothing when compared to America. The reciprocated antipathy is intense and seems irreconcilable. Did the election of Obama heal that fissure? Briefly seal it perhaps, but certainly not heal it. A hundred days later it all seems to be opening up again as wide as ever and anyone who watches Fox News will know that as far as President Obama’s political enemies are concerned the honeymoon was over before the garbled vows were out of the bridegroom’s mouth: the United States were soon disunited all over again."

http://www.stephenfry.com/blog/2009/07/04/america’s-place-in-the-world/