Proud(ish) To Be An American

So we’re coming up on the Fourth of July weekend – fireworks, hot dogs, grass-stains… all in all, a good time to be alive, right? Well, other than the one day off from work I get, I gotta say there’s not a whole lot about this weekend I’ve been looking forward to. I’ve kinda been surprised at the enthusiasm with which most others seem to approach the holiday, and I’ve wondered why I don’t have the same excitement.

Well, as it turns out, I don’t actually LIKE Independence Day very much.

This shouldn’t really be a surprise – as y’all may have noticed, I “don’t like” a lot of things. Still, I actually feel kinda bad about not liking the Fourth of July. Ever since elementary school, my educators (and peers) have tried to impress on me the almost religious significance of Independence Day. Not liking Independence Day somehow feels like a bit of treachery, like I’m some kind of unpatriotic Benedict Arnold that deserves to be drawn and feathered… or tarred and quartered… torn and fettered… fawn and… heck, maybe just shot.

Here’s the weird part – I can’t even tell you WHY I don’t like Independence Day. I mean, I can point out aspects of the celebration I don’t like – hot dogs and fireworks, for example (grass stains, on the other hand, I’m totally down with). So, I guess, my distaste for the holiday makes me some kind of heathen, right?

The best explanation I can come up with is that I dislike most forms of extreme fanaticism (with the possible exception of Batman fanaticism), and, sometimes, American patriotism strikes me that way. I actually wrote a while back (on Facebook) about a young woman I heard sing “The Star-Spangled Banner” at a rodeo:

“I don’t mean to disparage the singer too harshly. I’ve sung the national anthem before, and I can tell you one thing: it’s a HARD song. For this girl to get up and sing without the benefit of musical accompaniment must have taken a lot of courage, and I respect her for that. However, she added so many runs and other embellishments that almost every phrase wound up in a different key than the one that preceded it. If the anthem is meant to be a song of respect for a nation, then it should be performed in a dignified manner. Generally speaking, the anthem should not be sung as a showcase number.”

Allow me to turn my old observation into a tortured metaphor (more tortured, perhaps, because of my awkward use of the word “disparage”): Just as the young singer tried to sing the heck out of the National Anthem and ultimately put on a tortured performance, so does our devotion to God and country goes a bit overboard, and we wind up causing a bit of damage to the reputation of the very thing we try to honor.

I guess that’s as close as I can get to an explanation. Anyway, happy Independence Day. Don’t have too much fun, or Samara will crawl out of your television and kill you.