Editorial: On the nature of the 4th of July, and how they play us. July 4 2017

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We have TWO SEPARATE EDITIONS TODAY. The other one is the events of the day. In THIS one, we offer some essential thoughts on the nature of this most ostensibly "patriotic" of days for this 4th of July. The context of our time, as immediate as TODAY, requires we do this -- amidst the unending rancor and obfuscation of mainstream media obsessed with making their emphatically breathlessness and singular points, while the world burns.
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If you're really only interested in going outside to play?

SEE TODAY'S COMPANION EDITION for a very specific lowdown on all the 4th of July events, from concerts to picnics to fireworks and assorted hoopla.

It's available by scrolling past this edition, or by going directly to:

https://acousticamericana.blogspot.com/2017/07/4th-of-july-compete-day-guide-excerpted.html
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FOR THOSE WHO GET THE SENSE that sumpin' jus' ain't quite right about all this hoopla and the tone it takes? We offer today's editorial (more than the short thoughts we offer in the other edition).

The fully developed version, ready to be argued, is right here.

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ON THE NATURE OF THE 4th OF JULY, AND HOW THEY PLAY US


By Larry Wines

It's not a day when many people intentionally make themselves unpopular. But it's necessary. Sure, I know, it's far too easy to be relieved with the day off, beer and barbecue and good company on the 4th of July. It's not a holiday that seems to require inviting your redneck uncle and stewng in awkwardness and rancor, like, say, Christmas. Nearly everybody is thrilled to be able to watch fireworks. And somehow nobody likes to talk about how the audio aspects of the aerial displays traumatize the pets and make them pee on the carpet and tremble beside your bed for the next three nights.

Perhaps that dialog is never allowed because it might traverse into the human dimensions. With evermore military veterans joining the ranks of those formerly in uniform, our nation has an appreciable, if unquantified, population of people traumatized by war. And it's not a day when many are willing to look at all the things we do that keep making more traumatized people.

So too many among us talk, obliviously, about the PBS "Capitol Fourth" with its military band music, and who is the guest conductor, and what Hollywood people are doing the dramatic readings or singing this year.

And we celebrate the music and spectacle as big as the sky -- both for what that is, and, far too readily, for what it is not.

All the while, too damn much of what TV presents under the guise of "patriotic 4th of July programming" is thinly-veiled glorification of military might. Sadly, it's a convention, a tenet of our society that permeates all the way down to the announcers' scripts at the municipal fireworks show. It functions as indoctrination of an entire society to a nebulous, de rigueur patriotism as the marching band for pugilistic muscle-flexing. It's as blatant as Cecil B. DeMille and as insidious as anything the CIA plants in mainstream media. It works by trotting out sterile euphemisms like "let's congratulate our heroes on their 14th multiple deployment," because it's what "keeps us safe" and "keeps America free."

Free, apparently by continuously occupying somebody else's country and depriving them of their freedom and ability to determine their own national destiny.

We get even more phrases that distance us from some very basic realities. Things like how we must congratulate our troops on their "forward force deployment" where they're "showing a strong presence."

All combine into attempts to make reality into a fantasy of impressive, desirable, and sexy technogadgets with "real time look down video monitoring" without getting into the purpose. And that purpose is, once all the BS is shoveled aside, all about a bunch of horrendously expensive, distractingly dazzling whizbang technology that goes bang in somebody else's night, and isn't about "oohs and ahhs" of fireworks displays.

We don't need to get into the indoctrination of young people with NSA and CIA and Pentagon sponsorship funding for video game development that makes people into good drone pilots who launch Hellfire missiles as easily as they crack a pull tab on a can.

And we are already over the line of what's silently deemed necessary to always show respect for all the military families.

But it's all become too intentionally convoluted to the point of intractable confusion.

Honoring our veterans -- too many of whom have returned home with lifelong wounds that do and don't leave visible scars -- is not the same thing as remaining unquestioning of the goals, aims, and policies that continue to make more damaged veterans. Instead, we live with a ubiquitous, Kafkaesque dialog of ever-redefined intent and "need" to do more. To attack more. To launch more cruise missiles. To drop more megabombs. To send more "advisors." To send our military "trainers" with millions of dollars more weapons that we fantastically assert we will "take back" from the recipients after they have bled and died using them, as we say we will do from the Kurds so they won't use them on the Turks. The sideline markers are always moved. Forget about finding the end zone marker, because there is no goal line in today's paradigms of perpetual war.

The military represents that it teaches duty, honor, country. We give medals to those in uniform who epitomize that. And it goes on and on, as duty skews honor and purpose away from what might really be good, even necessary for the honor and well being of the country.

We hold our military families in an untouchable place, not simply to some other standard. Perhaps that's because most of us don't have any desire to put on the uniform and get shot at. In fact, many young people join the military because our nation's economic opportunities are so poor that a short military career brings free college, lifelong health care, and a guaranteed pension that cannot be stolen by a corporation that moves overseas.

And so we continue to spend more money on deadly military gew-gaws than all the other nations of the world spend, combined. We continue to do things that should have us questioning the patriotism of those who advocate endless war as the once-mighty American economic engine chokes and sputters and ultimately, declines and decays around us. We allow our political lackeys to take campaign contributions that make them wholly-owned subsidiaries of the perpetual war machine.

And so we deprive the American taxpayer of things that would advance our society for ourselves, our kids, and for a future that would make us competitive with the rest of the industrialized world. The US, alone among industrialized nations, has no high speed rail. We are the only major nation failing in a wholesale conversion away from oil to clean energy, and we sure as hell are not competitive when we talk about bringing coal mining jobs back to add to global greenhouse gases. We once owned space exploration. Now we settle for robots whose development assures no truck drivers or retail store workers by 2025.

Fourth of July or not, a day when we are being made to feel necessarily patriotic or not, THAT is the dialog we need to have about America. It is THE discussion that cannot abate, that cannot be distracted or obfuscated by Trump Derangement Syndrome or somebody's breathless presentation of cult-of-personality cable news. Because, and in fact, in a nation that celebrates freedom of conscience, a full, inclusive, airing of ALL the facts, however uncomfortable and inconvenient for the corporatocracy or the plutocracy or anyone else, must never be silenced. Or distracted. Or obfuscated. Or co-opted by Big Media to gratify their military-industrial-cybersecurity advertisers and stockholders. Or made distant by the unending campaign of Big Phama to medicate us all into oblivion. Because it's time we make a clear evaluation of what we too easily characterize as "patriotic."

In that context, Happy 4th of July.


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Check our JULY 4th EVENTS EDITION (and events beyond) for a Guide on things to do.

A fresh MUSIC NEWS edition is coming soon.

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LEGALESE, CONTACTING US, 'N SUCH...

Boilerplate? Where's the main pressure gauge? And the firebox?

What "boilerplate"? Who came up with that goofy term for the basic essential informational stuff...
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♪ The ACOUSTIC AMERICANA MUSIC GUIDE endeavors to bring you NEWS — and views of interest to artists everywhere — more specifically to musicians and the creative community and music makers and fans of acoustic and Folk-Americana music. That includes both traditional and innovative forms. From the deepest roots to today’s acoustic renaissance, that’s our beat. We provide a wealth of resources, including a HUGE catalog of acoustic-friendly venues (now undergoing a major update), and inside info on FESTIVALS and select performances in Southern California in venues from the monumentally large to the intimately small and cozy. We cover workshops, conferences, and other events for artists and folks in the music industry, and all kinds o’ things in the world of acoustic and Americana and accessible classical music. From washtub bass to musical spoons to oboe to viola to banjo to squeezebox, from Djangostyle to new-fangled-old-time string band music, from sweet Cajun fiddle to bluegrass and pre-bluegrass Appalachian mountain music to all the swamp water roots of the blues and the bright lights of where the music is headed now.
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