Rant #2,686: Crash and Burn

How was your July 4 celebration?
 
Ours was really great!
 
After probably the most horrible week of my life—or certainly a contender for that crown—my family and I had a relaxing holiday.
 
We had a barbecue with my wife’s two brothers and their spouses as our guests, and my mother—who usually sees my sister on Sundays—also was there, which made everything extra special.
 
I barbecued, barbecued, and barbecued some more, and at least for one afternoon, it put my troubles behind me.
 
Almost everything came out fine—my hamburgers fell apart for some reason, or at least a few of them did—and the hot dogs, the ribs, the fish and everything else I made came out splendidly.
 
I proved to myself that even with this bad eye that I have, I can continue to do what I want to do, to a certain extent, and everything was hunky dory as we celebrated the 245th birthday of the greatest country in the world.
 
So we are now at number 245 … five more years for the country’s 250the birthday.
 
I will bet that marketing people are already planning for that anniversary, which is not as important as the 200th was way back in 1976, but is still a notable occasion.
 
You might remember the bicentennial. It was turned into a major celebration by every company that was operating at the time, with promotions, special releases, I mean just about everything you could imagine to boost our awareness of such a momentous anniversary—
 
And to make money, of course. Let’s be honest about it, that is the bottom line in these things, isn’t it?
 
So you can bet that when we hit number 250 in 2026, companies will be raring to go with their marketing of that event.
 
During the bicentennial, I was 19 years old, so I bought into this thing hook, line and sinker, just like everyone else did.
 
For the 250th celebration, I will be 69 years old, so while I will probably buy into it as I did during the bicentennial, it will certainly have a different vibe for me and most Americans who were alive for both of them.
 
The world has changed so much in the past 50 years, and not necessarily for the good, and you just know that the next major anniversary of our country’s existence cannot possibly look like the earlier one.
 
We have a divided country today, divided by the pandemic, by race, by sexual identity, by status, and by age.
 
It is like we are not all Americans anymore.
 
We have a Tower of Babel of narratives that fuel who we are, rather than sharing the same narrative that we are all Americans at the core.
 
We are, instead, white Americans, black Americans, gay Americans, rich Americans and poor Americans, and so many other --Americans rather than Americans, period.
 
All this is fueled by the media and politicians who stand to benefit by such divisions.
 
Sure, we had divisions in 1976, but not like today.
 
In 1976, we were just coming off a devastating war that we probably should not have been a part of, and feelings were still raw even though our soldiers had come home from that conflict, and unfortunately came home bruised and battered by their own fellow Americans.
 
We had just been through Watergate, had a president step down while in office, and even back then, our world was a bit messy.
 
But that mess could not possibly compare with the mess at hand today, where people go by their rigid agendas and have been taught not to use their brains in any constructive way.
 
We allow too much to pass as “normal” today, and such a stance is a poor one, stabbing us in the back at seemingly every turn.
 
We are just coming off a pandemic, and you would think that alone would unite a country, and even a world.
 
But it hasn’t; it has made the divisions that much wider, because we cannot get on the same page about fighting this thing tooth and nail.
 
And as I said earlier, we have stopped using our brains, instead letting ego-driven politicians and others think for us.

 
Even though we had problems in 1976, we never lost our ability to think and make rational decisions and choices way back then.
 
Today, I really don’t think you can say the same.
 
So as I barbecued yesterday and celebrated our 245th anniversary, I did think about the 250th, and how that will be handled in five years as opposed to the celebration we had for the 200th in 1976.

Will we celebrate together as a country, or will we celebrate as a separated country by race, by creed, by religion, and/or by sexuality?
 
And although we have time to fix ourselves, I shudder to think how the 250th anniversary will be played out.
 
As I said, I am sure the marketers are already planning for it, but it just won’t be the same as it was in 1976.
 
Thus, during the next five years, it is our duty as Americans—not  –Americans—to make sure that the 250th birthday of this great country is as good as the 200th was.
 
Can we do it?
 
It is nothing better than a 50/50 crapshoot, in my opinion.