July 4

I grew up in Washington, D.C., so the Fourth of July was always a little extra as they say. I spent many Fourths on the Mall, before they cracked down on alcohol consumption and it was the closest thing you got to Mardi Gras. One year, I saw Paul McCartney perform at RFK Stadium. Another year, I got to spend it on the lawn of the White House watching the fireworks explode from what felt like right on top of where I was sitting. 

It is part of the reason I find what Trump is doing today so gross. He is tainting what should be an agnostic, communal celebration of our country with a cult of personality event. The sight of heavy military equipment and flag officers standing next to him gives it that dictatorial sheen and that he is using the Lincoln Memorial as a backdrop is also offensive. 

I am not sure why people are not marching in the streets. Maybe it is because we have become numbed to all of it. Maybe we just like complaining about things on social media because we do not think anything can change. In the 1960s, hundreds of thousands marched on D.C. time and again to protest inequality, injustice, and the Vietnam War. Maybe it was because the stakes were more tangible - literally, life and death. Now, the idea of a constitutional crisis is esoteric, it is difficult to explain why it is a bad thing for our nation when a President ignores an opinion of the Supreme Court. And maybe because people are not marching in the street over that fact, or the conditions migrants are being kept in at the border, or the lengthy documentation of Trump's criminality, from obstructing an investigation to concealing hush money payments, that makes it all seem ... normal. Just run-of-the-mill political sniping between the parties, not the erosion of the rule of law. 

Anyway, I am much older now and there will be no revelry. Chances are, I will be asleep before the local fireworks display launches at around 9:30 (I will probably be annoyed if it keeps me up). I am otherwise trying to follow my own advice that if you ignore Trump, eventually, he will go away.

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