Can't take away our rights

Including the right not to celebrate.

I normally always go all out for holidays, 4th of July included. As my father did, I put out the American flag from memorial Day to Labor Day. For the 4th, a local realtor here puts our little flags on everyone's front yard, I have 10 of them now, and display them all over the yard.

But last year, things felt different. I took down the flag for flag day in June. This year, the flag stayed in the garage, and still isn't out. When the little flag arrived in my front yard today, it immediately went into the shed with the rest. And that made me a bit sad. I was really looking forward to celebrating 250 years of this country. Sure, we're not perfect, we've done some bad shit to other countries and people. But no one is perfect either, as great as they are too.

But I don't think there is anything to celebrate right now. And I realized, that this is one of the greatest things, freedom. Freedom not to celebrate. Freedom not to participate in the bullshit.

Someday we'll wake up to his obituary. We'll scrub the stains of his existence from public displays. We will rebuild what he destroyed. Our fellow humans in Germany rebuilt nearly 80 years ago, and so can we. Someday, I will have something to celebrate again.