I was born in 1980. I remember as a kid reading the sanitized, patriotic revisionist version of American history, and thinking with pride how exciting it would be to celebrate the nation's 250th anniversary when I grew up.
Now the Semiquincentennial is here, and I want nothing to do with it at all.
"When you walk around Washington, D.C.,” said Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, one of the night’s warmup acts, “not only is it safe again. It’s beautiful again.” This is such a powerful statement and you allude to it's danger, ..."have been made both safe and beautiful, simply by fencing them off, filling them with soldiers, and redesigning them as a suburban lawn. First, these blocks, and next, the world."
The event was a testament to their success, thus far, in creating two versions of America. An America where might makes right, those in power rule over law, not with it, and where being an American is narrowly defined but always nebulous; to keep you loyal it has to be that way. The other version, a diverse but fraught America trying to be a more perfect union is being dismantled by, to use your description, a suburban lawn. An astro turf suburban lawn, rolled out over that diverse ecosystem in order to stifle and then kill it.
I was born in 1980. I remember as a kid reading the sanitized, patriotic revisionist version of American history, and thinking with pride how exciting it would be to celebrate the nation's 250th anniversary when I grew up.
Now the Semiquincentennial is here, and I want nothing to do with it at all.
[ … prompting a petulant President Donald Trump to declare that he would “take the place of these highly paid, Third Rate ‘Artists’ … ]
So he originally wanted third-rate artists for the most epic party ever? Only the best for America!
"When you walk around Washington, D.C.,” said Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, one of the night’s warmup acts, “not only is it safe again. It’s beautiful again.” This is such a powerful statement and you allude to it's danger, ..."have been made both safe and beautiful, simply by fencing them off, filling them with soldiers, and redesigning them as a suburban lawn. First, these blocks, and next, the world."
The event was a testament to their success, thus far, in creating two versions of America. An America where might makes right, those in power rule over law, not with it, and where being an American is narrowly defined but always nebulous; to keep you loyal it has to be that way. The other version, a diverse but fraught America trying to be a more perfect union is being dismantled by, to use your description, a suburban lawn. An astro turf suburban lawn, rolled out over that diverse ecosystem in order to stifle and then kill it.
This event wasn't a celebration, it was an auto-da-fé of the US of A