I was talking to one of my friends and he mentioned staying home on July 4, citing how there are a lot of really ugly things going on in the US.

After thinking about this myself, I’m starting to feel the same way. Instead of being proud of the country, I’m feeling like I’m just another wallet that companies and the government are trying to suck all the money out of.

The cost of living is going up, the housing market is a nightmare, I don’t feel very confident in our government at all, the job market is a nightmare…

I think I’ll be staying home this year too… anyone else?

  • betterdeadthanreddit@lemmy.world
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    15 days ago

    I’ll make a nice meal and reflect on what’s driving us further from the country we’re supposed to be. Thinking of it more like memorial day until there’s something to celebrate again.

  • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
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    15 days ago

    What the fuck would I have to be proud of? The US has been on a downward trend for a long time and that’s accelerating

  • Machinist@lemmy.world
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    13 days ago

    I’m celebrating Happy Fireworks Day!

    I’ve got new neighbors that are probably about to hear, “Fire in the hole!” unironically for the first time. You can actually see the shockwave from my blackpowder signal cannon. Good chance the cops show up.

    I usually use the cannon to vaporize 10oz of kerosene for a nice mushroom cloud of fire, but I’ll have to see how it goes.

    I’m a pyro.

    Y’all wear safety glasses if having bottle rocket fights or roman candle duels.

  • EarthshipTechIntern01@lemmy.world
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    15 days ago

    People around the country have stood up to make change.

    Our politicians haven’t done good for the people.

    Take back the power.

    Join a No Kings March on July 4th

    Celebrate the awesome people of this country, join in.

    We want massive change. Politicians may act deaf to anything but money. The money flow changes when we stand together

  • aceshigh@lemmy.world
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    14 days ago

    While walking the dog I keep tabs on houses that have flags up, and there has been an uptick for about a month now. I assume it’s for the 4th, but I’m curious who will keep their flags up.

    I’ve also noticed that some people keep putting theirs up then taking them down, and I wonder what changes…

  • cley_faye@lemmy.world
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    15 days ago

    I find it reassuring that some people are not proud of grabbing random people off the street to send them to their death with a smile.

    • expr@programming.dev
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      14 days ago

      That’s the majority of Americans. Beyond what was almost certainly a stolen election (large scale, billionaire-bankrolled propaganda, campaigns, voter disenfranchisement, and probably voting machine manipulation), Trump’s disapproval rating since starting that shit has skyrocketed.

      We are in an awful fascist quagmire of a situation that we are going to have to fight to free ourselves from, but that doesn’t mean that the actions of this administration actually represent us.

  • billwashere@lemmy.world
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    15 days ago

    Yeah I’m just sick of all the greed and racism. I just want some MANSA (Make America not suck anymore)

  • squaresinger@lemmy.world
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    15 days ago

    After thinking about this myself, I’m starting to feel the same way. Instead of being proud of the country, I’m feeling like I’m just another wallet that companies and the government are trying to suck all the money out of.

    Always have been, always will be.

    The cost of living is going up, the housing market is a nightmare

    Don’t worry, once they deported or killed all the Jews illegals the prices will surely come down.

  • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
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    15 days ago

    Flags have become a warning over the last decade or so about the person waving it. It no longer has the hope of a better America, solidarity, or welcome; it’s a symbol of a myopic, selfish, aggro, uneducated person full of performative nationalism and real hatreds.

    Our independence was supposed to free the people of kings and tyrants. It’s been 249 years since 1776, we have undone what the Constitution authors fought for.

    • squaresinger@lemmy.world
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      15 days ago

      Our independence was supposed to free the people of kings and tyrants. It’s been 249 years since 1776, we have undone what the Constitution authors fought for.

      That’s what happens if you stick with a quarter-millennium old prototype of a semi-democratic system.

      The constitution was revolutionary and ground-breaking, a quarter millennium ago. But still running that old piece of toilet paper as the basis of a democratic system in 2025 is like driving a Ford Model T today and claiming that it still is the latest and greatest automobile ever created.

      • villainy@lemmy.world
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        14 days ago

        This is why we have constitutional amendments. It’s been extended a good bit over the last centuries. The tools are there but nobody wants to, or can agree on how to, use them.

        • squaresinger@lemmy.world
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          14 days ago

          Have you looked at the amendments? So far there have only been 27 of them over 236 years. Ten of them were created within a year of the constitution being created. They were basically Zero-Day-Patches, not actual amendments, and two amendments only exist to nullify each other (18 and 21) which leaves 15 amendments over 235 years (one of which was actually also created within the first year and only ratified 200 years later).

          The last time an amendment was proposed was 54 years ago and the last one ratified was 33 years ago.

          Not counting the Zero-Day-Patches, not a lot of these amendments actually change anything fundamental. Notable ones are 12 (governs the election of VP), 13-15 and 19 (civil rights), 17 (election of senators), 22 (president’s term limit) and 25 (succession of the president).

          Notably absent from the amendments is anything that changes the core political system or electoral system.

          Compare that to other countries. In the time that the US constitution hat 15 minor amendments, France had a total of 15 complete constitution re-writes, not even counting amendments. 15 full new constitutions.

          Germany had 69 constitutional amendments since 1949 (76 years, so almost one amendment per year, compared to the 1/16 amendments per year in the USA).

          But by far the biggest issue is that a constitutional amendment cannot actually fix fundamental systemic issues. The people who have the power to change the constitution came to power within the current system, so if they fundamentally change how the system works (e.g. by repairing the electoral system in a way that more than two parties can be relevant), they are directly cutting into their own power, so of course they won’t do that.

          That’s what you need major constitutional crises for (like e.g. Europe after WW2), so that the constitution can be re-written from scratch, fixing the issues that lead to the crisis.

          But the US has been too big to fail for too long and thus there never was anything big enough to take down the US so that it needed to be restarted from scratch. The closest they came to was the civil war, but they didn’t take the opportunity to actually overhaul the system. Probably because it was still too early and there wasn’t much of a precedent of how to build a better democratic system.

          But who knows, at the current rate it might be likely that the US is quite close to another chance to re-write the constitution.

      • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
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        14 days ago

        I always find irony in the fact that the US helped set up better forms of government in the countries it fought in WW2, Japan and Germany, than it could make better in its own country.

        • squaresinger@lemmy.world
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          14 days ago

          It does make sense though. The main motivator for politicians is power. That means, naturally political systems flow towards maximizing power for those in power, that’s just the natural progression.

          To change this, major political upheavals are necessary, so basically events where the whole old leadership is tossed out and the new leadership can try to setup something to stop the same thing from happening again.

          WW2 was perfect for that. All those countries were in need of a completely new political system and thus they could be built better from the ground up.

          The US never had any event like that (apart maybe from the civil war).

          To change the system without such an event, two thirds of all relevant politicians would have to vote for changing the system that brought them to power. Not likely to happen.

  • foggy@lemmy.world
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    15 days ago

    I believe you’re supposed to fly a flag upside down in times of distress.

    I think it would be wildly powerful for some cities to flip their flags for the 4th.