Fireworks In An Age Of Fascism

In my early 20s, I would go with my parents and brother and aunts and uncles to a fireworks display in D.C. or Rockville or College Park, and I would inwardly (and sometimes outwardly) scoff at the ridiculous jingoistic display.

I was fun to be around, everyone said so.

Look at these rubes, I'd think, their necks craned, watching the fireworks go boom boom while Lee Greenwood's God Bless The USA blared in the background. While we wage wars of imperial expansion and wanton greed waged by morons and dunderheads, these red-white-and-blue idiots celebrate with sparkly explosions in the sky. Grow up, I'd think.

It's much different today, with my 42nd birthday around the corner. I'm not as monstrously judgmental as I once was. I recognize that people like their traditions, and if they're harmless, they should probably be able to keep those traditions without being made to feel bad about feeling good, however fleeting that might be. I fight my urge to chastise people for enjoying things, just as I have chastised myself for enjoying things in this unspeakably bleak cultural and political moment.

Thankfully I got a little Bluesky pep talk from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez about the importance of enjoying shit even amid today's misery – it's one I'd like to share with BFT readers who might struggle the way I have struggled over these past six terrible months.

Back to July 4 fireworks: Those opposed to fascism in the US are going to have no choice in the coming months and years but to leverage patriotism to beat back those who do not recognize constitutional limitations on their power (I've experimented with this idea). We already saw this come to fruition during last month's No Kings rallies, an unprecedented show of opposition against creeping authoritarianism. Normies – folks who don't track political news as if their goddamn lives depend on it – came out in force to say no to the idea of an American king reshaping the country in his hideous image.

We're going to need those normies for the long haul, and a lot of them love the American flag and fireworks and yeah, even Lee Greenwood's song. Is that my thing? It is most definitely not. Would I welcome those formerly unengaged Americans into an anti-fascist tent? I would. I certainly would. People want to be sold a story in which they are the good guys. That goes for low-information and no-information voters as well as those who torture themselves with the news.

Stray Thoughts On Patriotism

Being able to claim love of country as a pillar of your political brand is an outsized advantage for Democrats.

Bad Faith TimesDenny Carter

I wrote last August about the American right giving up their monopoly on patriotism, choosing the formation of a nationwide cult headed by a criminal and a traitor to the country over the tradition of at least feigning love for country. Democratic campaigns during the past decade have been far more traditionally pro-America than their Republican opponents, who denigrate what the nation has become in most states: A multicultural democracy that has seen freedom slowly expand.

This has created the conditions of Republican dystopia, and their pledge during the Trump era has been to make freedom as exclusive as they possibly can. Republican messaging for ten years has been explicitly anti-freedom. Today they talk of stripping their enemies of citizenship, a "form of punishment more primitive than torture, for it destroys for the individual the political existence that was centuries in the development," as Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren once said.

I wrote in August:

That the right would give up patriotism, such a valuable and effective political weapon, is beyond comprehension. It had been so easy for them to play the patriotism card any time the center or left pushed back against their plotting and scheming. Now they boo when American hostages come home and they cheer when their presidential-candidate-for-life praises dictators as models of strength. These are all nakedly anti-American in nature. Perhaps it shouldn't be a surprise for a group of people who have desecrated the American flag with blue lines and Trump's face and other variations meant to indicate that there is only one kind of Real American, and you ain't it. ... It's an enormous advantage for Democrats because, put simply, normies love the shit out of patriotism and its self-affirming trappings. Democrats being able to say (in good faith) that they are trying to save the nation from an internal enemy – while Republicans make no secret of their disdain for America – gives Democrats a sustained edge in appealing to normal folks, those who don't spend forty hours a week reading about Hunter Biden's laptop and the gender of Olympic boxers. Republicans have given up their most effective weapon and handed it to Democrats – a baffling concession that will change American politics for at least one generation, maybe more.

Maybe you're a fireworks hater because they freak out dogs and that's not cool (I don't have direct experience with this because my dog, Ziggy – a certified Good Boy – has floppy ears and seems unbothered by the popping of fireworks). That's fine. I get it.

But those of us who are highly engaged – through news consumption and local involvement – are going to have to get used to the idea of welcoming less informed people who are going to be woken up in the rudest ways possible over the next couple years. Some of those folks are going to like the American flag, and fireworks, and however else one cosplays an American in the 21st century. They're not going to be as savvy as you, or know as many big, weird political terms as you, and might lack the critically important historical context you have. And that's OK.

Follow Denny Carter on Bluesky at @dennycarter.bsky.social.