Most Independence Days come and go without leaving a lasting impression on me. There are a few exceptions.
In 1998 we went with my sister-in-law and her husband to the National Mall in Washington to watch the fireworks. Weaving our way through a crowd of a few hundred thousand people, we found a spot, laid out our blankets, and settled down to await the show. When the first firework went “boom” our daughter, still a baby, yelled, “Time to go!” — which she repeated, with increasing insistence, until the last traces of the grand finale had faded from the sky.
There was also 1976. As a reporter for a newspaper in Alabama I covered the parades in the small towns around our county. Coming not long after Watergate and the wind-down of the Vietnam War, they struck me as hollow, less a heartfelt celebration of freedom or national glory as a forced effort to put on a patriotic happy face for the Bicentennial. This feeling might simply be a reflection of the unsettled state of my own life at the time, though. The kids on the floats seemed to be having fun.
The Fourth of July that is most vivid to me is that of 1963. I don’t know why, other than me being 12 years old. Many episodes in my life from around that time are brightly etched in memory, like snapshots with all details preserved. Does something about puberty turn the memory recorder’s dial up to 11?
Wondering about this led me to learning about the so-called reminiscence bump, “The … tendency for older adults (over forty) to have increased or enhanced recollection for events that occurred during their adolescence and early adulthood.” (Wikipedia)
In my case, the years from ages 10 through 13 for some reason are more heavily represented in my mental photo album than others. It’s a mystery to me. Other than the normal hormonal changes, nothing earthshaking happened to me at that time, for good or for bad. (I did spend a lot of time worrying about nuclear bombs and how my family would survive an irradiated apocalypse, but didn’t every kid back then?)
This article by Liesl Goecker, Why Childhood Memories Are Vivid for Some, Hazy for Others, explains semantic vs. episodic memory. More interestingly, she delves into the two ways episodic memories are processed, verbatim and gist. Verbatim memories are accurate recordings of events, whereas gist memories essentially are ones we construct, filling in missing parts and revising as years pass.
I know that many of my memories are reconstructions, and for that reason untrue to a greater or lesser degree. But I also believe that for at least some parts of my life, the verbatim memories are strong. Goecker writes,
“[S]ome people have exceptional verbatim memory when it comes to the events of their life. Highly superior autobiographical memory (HSAM), also known as hyperthymesia, is characterized by an unusual number of extremely vivid personal memories. People with HSAM can recall, without conscious effort or mnemonic tricks, much of their lived experiences in detail, to the date and time, including events banal and recurring (teeth brushing, or the weather, say), as well as milestones (a graduation, for instance, or a world event).”
A highly superior autobiographical memory is actually rare, and I don’t claim to possess one. However, I have to wonder if something close to it was functioning during my transition from childhood to adolescence, because my impressions from then are so strong.
Here’s what I remember from that July 4th, 1963.
My parents, brother and I are in the Cangemis’ meticulously landscaped back yard. Pat and Daisy (my grand uncle and aunt), Jimmy (my second cousin, who is married to one of the Cangemi girls) and all the Cangemis are there. Mr. Cangemi is grilling. Mrs. Cangemi is talking about her flowers to anyone who will listen. At some point I take a turn cranking an ice cream freezer.
There’s a big tub filled with ice, and poking out from the ice are cans of beer and bottles of Coke, 7-Up and a weird diet drink Coca-Cola had just come out with, called Tab. It tastes like medicine to me, but it’s the only thing the Cangemi daughters are drinking, because they’re watching their figures, as one tells me.
Over a portable radio we listen to “Jingle Bell Rock” and “Rocking Around the Christmas Tree.” Ostensibly to promote safer holiday driving, Mobile’s top-40 station announced it would play Yuletide songs through the weekend “for all the people who won’t be with us this Christmas.” It sounds macabre, but radio stations pulled all kinds of gimmicky stunts like this back in the day.
In between Christmas songs, Lesley Gore’s “It’s My Party” vies with the Essex’s “Easier Said Than Done” for most radio spins that afternoon. I hear a new record that catches my attenion: “Blowin’ In the Wind” by Peter, Paul & Mary. The song will become one of the anthems of the Civil Rights movement, just in time for the March On Washington in August.
When I recall that July 4th, I imagine I’m watching the opening scene of a movie set in the summer of 1963, with the all the right visual and auditory flourishes for period authenticity. The movie would show the characters enjoying moments of innocence before “everything changed” (to borrow a phrase from Serious Punditry) with the Nov. 22 Coup. Perhaps I should write that movie.
Some people contend that JFK’s murder marked the real end of the Fifties, and that the arrival of the Beatles marked the real beginning of the Sixties. If that’s true then I wonder: What were the ten or so weeks between those two events? A very pregnant pause in history?
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches from Liverpool — and towards Selma — to be born?
I just came up with that. I grant you permission to use it should you choose to write the greatest movie ever about the Sixties.
Fourth of July this year, 2022, seemed different than all the others I’ve lived, those recalled in sharp relief as well as those remembered only hazily, as I observe that Americans’ tolerance for one another has snapped. Unlike 1963, 1976 or even 1998, they seem to have gotten on each other’s last nerves, to the point where the center can no longer hold. But why should it?
The idea that we must continue to pay obeisance to a controlling central government (so-called) ensconced on the banks of the Potomac puzzles me. Even more baffling is the idea that that gaggle of crooks, grifters and authoritarians should keep right on with their idiotic business: Imposing one-size-fits-all laws and mandates on people living in Honolulu, Anchorage, Bangor, Miami and everywhere in between.
As I said on Twitter following the recent attention to the Supreme Court in the wake of its rulings on abortion and guns:
Contra Abraham Lincoln and others, the Fourth of July does not commemorate the birth of a nation, let alone that of an all-powerful state dictating every aspect of our lives. The “thirteen united States of America” were viewed at the time as 13 separate and sovereign countries (note the plural), united only for mutual defense during an emergency.
Properly remembered, the Fourth celebrates a violent uprising by Americans against the established government of their day. Its Declaration asserts the right of the people to alter or abolish any government that no longer serves their ends. This right was conceived of as universal and timeless: It could be exercised against any government in any age, not just that of 18th-century Great Britain, but, if it came to it, that of 21st-century USA.
In short, the Founders were seditionists, insurrectionists and, in the eyes of many, traitors. Above all they were secessionists (the War for American Independence is probably a better term than the more widely used American Revolution).
I don’t believe in having rulers. That makes me an anarchist. However, I’m against revolution, for reasons both practical and moral.
Revolutions are bloody affairs. People get hurt and killed, many of them innocents swept up by the tide of events. At best, a revolution merely changes the faces of those who wield coercive power: Meet the new boss, same as the old boss, as The Who sang. More often it ends up installing worse tyrants and more oppressive systems than the ones that were overthrown.
In my opinion the welfare-warfare-surveillance state headquartered in Washington has long ceased to serve any beneficial purpose it might once have had. No one, aside perhaps from those profiting from its existence at others’ expense, seems very happy with it. It needs to go. But how, if not by revolution?
I favor bottom-up dissolution.
This could take any of several forms: Secession (hard or soft*), radical decentralization, personal secession through non-compliance with Washington’s dictates and exactions, and other actions that aim at separating from the beast rather than foolishly assaulting it.
There could be many avenues to separation, depending on the particular locale and the desires, abilities and resources of the people involved. Let a thousand flowers of freedom bloom and see what works.
A term I hear batted about these days is national divorce. That’s fine, but I worry it reinforces the whole red vs. blue framing of America’s political and social divide. The proper frame is freedom vs. authoritarianism, whatever color the latter might come in.
I prefer to imagine a slave rebellion, achieved not by burning down the big house and killing the masters, but simply by the slaves slipping away from the plantation to form their own free and peaceful communities.
For the record, I no more wish to be ruled by Raleigh or the politicians and bureaucrats in my county seat than I do by Washington, DC.
However, having 50 independent states, or 3,000 independent counties, or 10,000-plus independent cities and towns, would at least provide more of a marketplace in governance than what we have now. As things stand, these entities to a great degree have been reduced to mere administrative units for the governments above them.
A multiplicity of smaller, truly independent communities would expand opportunities for people to find a place that suits them in terms of their neighbors’ values as well as what rules they want to live under.
Hopefully, once the decentralizing train starts rolling, many more people would see the ridiculousness of coercive political government altogether. That train will never get out of the station so long as large numbers continue to place their hopes in backing the right gang to seize and hold the levers of power in Washington. For me, the day they abandon such futility will be an Independence Day worth celebrating.
* Hard secession is (for instance) a state legislature passing a formal declaration of separation. I call this the 1860s’ model of secession. But this isn’t the 1860s, and in my opinion too many people have this model stuck in their minds when they hear the word. Soft secession is a governor blocking federal Covid mandates, a mayor declaring his city an immigration sanctuary, a sheriff not enforcing gun laws emanating from the state capital, juries routinely nullifying victimless crime laws by refusing to convict violators, and so on. Personal secession could entail simply declining to vote, or it could mean engaging in economic activity without a government permission slip, “forgetting” to pay taxes, ending reliance on government police in favor of neighborhood protection arrangements — the possibilities are limitless, and become individually less risky as decentralization and statist collapse accelerate.
Permission is given to republish this article with these provisions: 1. You must credit me, R. Stephen Smith, as the author. 2. You must include a link back to this page or to my home page.
P.S: As I was finishing the above article, I took the time to watch these two videos. Both bear directly on what I’ve discussed here, and each is thought-provoking in its own way. Larken Rose’s in particular offers a great message of optimism.
Edit 8/24/2022: I notice that the first video is no longer publicly available (I don’t know why).