GK: The truth of the Fourth: a minority report

The Column: 07.02.21

Nobody gives Fourth of July speeches that I’m aware of because what can you say about beer and barbecue except (1) take small helpings and (2) stay out of the sun and (3) watch what you say and whom you say it to. This is not a united country and the divisions may well extend into your own family, a beloved uncle may cling to cherished ideas that qualify him for full-time supervision lest he spread them to your children. Any speech you’d give about American democracy would consist of four vague generalities wrapped in platitudes and frosted with mythology.

In our country today, a considerable minority of our fellow citizens believe that the 2020 election was stolen in plain sight by left-wing mathematicians in Venezuela who devised algorithms to rig voting machines to overturn a landslide Republican victory and elect a senile Democrat and his communistic base to run the government who want to confiscate your guns and make everyone ride bicycles and live on tofu and kale and who invented a fake Chinese influenza so they could force immunization with a vaccine that makes people passive and accepting of state control, which allows vampires to move freely and drink the blood of small children, but in August, when the rightful president is reinstated and our borders are secure, we can breathe freely again and make America great.

I take no position on that. Strange things happen every day. I am only an observer; I don’t make the rules. As I have said on so many occasions, “You kids work it out among yourselves.”

The history we were taught in school was far from complete. The Revolution of 1776 was held up as a heroic struggle for democracy in the face of tyranny, whereas it was more like a battle of one privileged class against another privileged class. And it could easily have turned out otherwise. The French once held a large piece of the Midwest and Canada where their explorers had penetrated and fur traders followed, but the French didn’t care that much about fur and their northern territory, they cared more about the sugar from their Caribbean colonies, and when, in 1763, they lost the war for the interior, Louis XV was relieved to cut his expenses and Voltaire said, “All we lost was a few acres of snow.” But still, the French were not averse to taking revenge on the English, and a decade later, when the English colonies rose up in rebellion, France encouraged them, and when the Revolution came down to a deadlock, France threw in on the rebel side and blockaded the English from rescuing Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown, and that is what turned the tide. Had the French held onto the interior, they wouldn’t have bothered, and the East Coast would be New England and the West would be New Spain and Detroit wouldn’t be Motown, it’d be Ville du Moteur and Fox News would be Nouvelles de Renard. My ancestors in Rhode Island and Connecticut would not have fled to Canada, as they did, and lost all their property, but would have prospered here and our ancestral mansions would be visited by tourists and I would’ve gone to Yale and I’d be a breeder of thoroughbreds and ride to hunt foxes and half the Vermeers and Van Goghs at the Met would have my name on a little brass plaque underneath.

It could easily have gone that way. Plenty of people were opposed to independence. They didn’t do opinion polling in the 18th century because they wanted to think well of their neighbors and not know how ignorant and benighted they were. In 1776, plenty of people waited to see which way the wind was blowing before they committed themselves.

Am I bitter that my family was driven out of the country when our only offense was to stand up for law and order? No, not one whit, not a speck, not a jot or tittle. It was unjust, and the Constitutional Convention was a gigantic scam, and when documents we have in our possession are made public, we will be reinstated and our stolen fortune returned to us with interest and a great deal of Connecticut and Rhode Island will be rightfully ours and Britannia shall rule, love it or leave it, down with the stripes and up with the Union Jack, and God save our gracious Queen.

Join us in "The Back Room" where we will post this weekend:

-18 versions of our “National Anthem” written in the style of some of the greats including Emily Dickinson, T.S. Eliot, Charles Bukowski, Billy Collins and many more.

-16 Dreadful Jokes

-A video segment of Letter excerpts from Walt Whitman’s brother, George, to his Mother with music by the U.S. Navy Band, Sara Watkins, Sarah Jarosz and Aoife O’Donovan.

-Video highlights from our APHC 40th Anniversary performance - “40 Years, 40 Songs”

“When My Morning Comes Around” 
July 2, 2016 – Garrison Keillor and Aoife O’Donovan