HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY. WHAT WE SHOULD REMEMBER AND WHAT WE SHOULD BE THANKFUL OF

As the Fourth of July is this week, this will be my last post until Sunday. Sorry, but have too many things to do otherwise, which sucks because there is so much happening right now. Egypt is a hair's breath away from all out civil war. The Zimmerman trial is not going well and race riots look to be a distinct possibility. Our economy is teetering while the media and government keep telling us the opposite. Health care costs are still soaring out of control, with or without Obamacare. Where is the good news anymore?

While all this is going on can we please all take a deep breath of sanity and stop with all the hostility and nonsense in this country? A recent poll said that almost 60% of this country didn't know basic facts about our Independence Day. Sarah Palin and her minions proved that when fathead opened her mouth about Paul Revere warning the British instead of the colonists. As a result, Wikipedia was assaulted with dittoheads actually trying to rewrite history to prove her right. That is some dangerous shit.

When did our education system collapse? Apparently some time ago because while polls show that the elderly still perform light years ahead of the younger generations on history, the reverse is true about more modern events. The old live in a time warp and the young live in a bubble. Neither is good. But the fact remains that Americans of all ages appear woefully stupid when it comes to truths about our beginnings and the Revolutionary War. Now I may not have been in school for a long time, but I still remember learning tons about that time period, although to be fair, I live in New England where all of this actually happened and my degree in Anthropology had me study lots about the time period. My research, while uncredited, still appears in the nations SNEEP codes, so if you're reading about corn growing or basket weaving in that time period, chances are it came from me.

But everyone learns about what really happened and no one seems to remember any of it, which is even more true now as education is about memorization and standardized testing rather than any real understanding of what is actually being learned. Our school system, like most things in this country, is terrible. And the conservatives are making it worse by demanding our kids learn whatever fairy tale of the minute they are obsessing about. Creationism is a lie and I can prove it, along with any other anthropologist out there. Teaching our kids about this is stupid to the infinite scale.

But for all our faults, I still believe that this was a great country that we can get back but not if we act in the most passive, sheeple way possible. Look at Egypt. Their "democratically" elected president is a thin veneer away from being forcefully removed by the Army. Why can't we have that happen here? If millions take to the street to demand, say, the impeachment of 99% of our elected officials, would the military side with the people or the government? I think the answer for that is obvious. While I know several people in the military who will not fight against civilians, there are way too many goose stepping idiots who will do anything their bosses tell them and if that means slaughtering civilians in the tens of thousands, some will do exactly that. How sad is it that Egyptians have a better understanding of what democracy is than we do?

We need to take a page from that play book and sit outside Congress and the House and demand real change. Yes we tried that with the Tea Party until that got hijacked by the right wing crazies. And then the left tried it with Occupy Wall Street which fizzled so fast I could hardly believe it. Neo-hippes are even dumber than the ones I used to hang out with at Grateful Dead shows. The constant thread I heard was this: "We won't make demands because that's terrorists do." First off, anyone who said that was a moron. If you don't make demands, you are nothing more than an obnoxious drum circle in the park. They didn't, as well as having anything resembling a organized leadership, so the whole movement came to a screeching halt as there was absolutely no where to go. The people they were protesting had no reason to change because they didn't ask them to change in any specific way. Egypt has made very specific demands that the Army is recognizing. That is how you make a stance.

This may all change when our economy goes belly up that major economists say is 87% likely this year and 98% next year. The reason for this is that because our elected officials are so partisan, nothing is happening. The fact that this has been going now for over thirty years has devastated this country and it will not continue on much longer at this rate.

But it could be worse. Greece and Spain are in full blown depressions, as well as an official recession throughout Europe. The world is behaving like scared children when it comes to Edward Snowden who might as well be a radioactive Dracula. France and Portugal created an international incident when they refused to let the Bolivian President's plane through their airspace as they had suspicions Snowden was on board, which he wasn't. The plane was redirected to another airport in the EU where a search found nothing. The Bolivian President was rightfully pissed. Is Snowden this dangerous to begin hostilities between other countries on blank suspicions? What info does he have that he hasn't released? According to some sources, he still has some dynamite stuff, which may be also the only reason he isn't dead yet. If something happens to him, know he was assassinated, like Michael Hastings.

This Fourth Of July let us remember how we got here and not let our increasingly fascist government take away everything we have fought for. We need to be like Egypt and take to the street in the millions and demand change. If we don't, we are so screwed. So happy 4th all. Be back on Sunday with my Douchebag column.