From The Ramparts

What Is The Significance of the Fourth of July in 2024?

                                          What Is The Significance of Fourth of July 2024

                                                             Junious Ricardo Stanton

In 1852 an escaped slave, orator, abolitionist and newspaper publisher named Frederick Douglas was asked by the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society from Rochester New York where he was residing at that time, to give a speech to commemorate the signing of the Declaration of Independence and the founding of this nation. The event was to held at Corinthian Hall in Rochester New York. Douglas agreed but his speech excoriated America for its hypocrisy, mendacity and barbarism regrading it’s peculiar institution of slavery towards its victims languishing in brutal chattel servitude. His speech was entitled What to The Slave is the Fourth of July?

Here we are one hundred and seventy-two years later yet Douglas’ speech could easily be revised and entitled What to the American Masses Is The Fourth of July? In 2024 the American middle and lower classes find themselves in a tenuous predicament. We no longer have the vaunted liberties, privileges and noble sounding national creed Douglas noted in the beginning of his speech; liberties and privileges he later exposed as a complete sham when it came to his enslaved people.

Today most of us while not languishing in brutal servitude, owned by other human beings or corporations we still are not free. Many of the guarantees in the Bill of Rights are or have been whittled away, others are in the process of being relegated to a deep memory hole of a by gone era. SO what is the significance of the Fourth of July in 2024?

What to a homeless person or family is the Fourth of July? While many are celebrating, bar-b ques, cooking out and vacationing, millions of Americans are homeless without shelter wallowing in squalid conditions, trying to survive and provide for themselves and their families. While they are suffering the indignities of poverty, displacement, marginalization and being ignored we have a government that is increasingly less receptive and responsive to their needs and desires. These so called public servants’ top priority are pleasing the monied interests, keeping fat cat lobbyists and the oligarchs who ply them with millions in bribes aka campaign contributions happy. Homeless people and most of us could never muster, amass the amounts of money the oligarch give them.

What to a struggling family is the Fourth of July when the cost of living is skyrocketing exponentially and they have to make crucial decisions about how they are going to juggle their meager funds to pay their bills, put food on the table, pay the mortgage, rent or car payment and still have enough money for a few simple pleasures? What to the people living paycheck to paycheck, who are dipping into their retirement and saving funds to survive is the Fourth of July?

What to people who just want to be left alone is a day celebrating freedom from government intrusion, harassment and abuse when the corporations and government are in increasingly colluding to monitor and spy on us twenty-four seven, three sixty-five, as they harvest our DNA at will, track, record and collect data on our comings and goings around the clock? Is this real freedom?

What to a populous that wants peace is a Fourth of July celebration when the American government is spending trillions of tax payer dollars, money the government does not have to fund wars that are killing innocent civilians, babies, men, women, children, to prop up a corrupt government that US meddling and intrigue helped create in 2014, that many US government officials are profiteering off of the war and the endemic corruption there. What to a pacifist is the US Fourth of July celebration while the government is supporting an apartheid state actively engaged in genocide and fomenting war against its neighbors? What to a young person is the Fourth of July now that he or she is subject to conscription to be sent off to fight these wars for a government that see them as mere cannon fodder?

What to a seeker f truth is the Fourth of July celebrations that ignores or suppresses the real history of this country, the human trafficking for enslavement purposes, the ongoing wars, undeclared military and “police” actions from 1776 to present totaling 93 per cent, two hundred and twenty-two out of two hundred and forty-eight years of its total existence?!

What to a sane person is the Fourth of July who must sift through the massive amount of lies, propaganda and gaslighting in the legacy media and social media platforms just to get some sense of what is actually going on in the world?

What to a person concerned about the direction and future of this nation is the Fourth of July in 20204 when we see the deplorable choice of candidates for the highest office in the land, the out and out foolishness of the political campaigns and the prospects of things turning around for the better not happening any time soon.

In short other than a day off, what to most Americans is the Fourth of July?

posted by Junious Ricardo Stanton @ 11:24 AM