Be a patriot.

Celebrate the founding fathers. Celebrate the country, the formation of the country, the exceptionalism of the country I was blessed to be born within but months ago, on the phone with my father, “I don’t really have that experience of pride about this place. That hasn’t been, not since I was a little kid,” Cloaking pride of patriots and flags and symbols and myths told and retold around dinner tables and television news sets, melting under the blind lights.

“Greatest country in the world! In the history of the world!”

Shrug: bombs and United Fruit and genocides and insurrections and poverty and lack of health insurance, rising mortality rates, division, racism, increasing homelessness, moneyed control of government where the rapists always walk, and any pretense is employed to put more of the poor in prison…and no food stamps when you get out, no rental assistance and no therapy for the trauma of being used for someone else’s profit and greed. When the bailouts come, your fair share gets wrapped up with a thousand other fair shares to buy a brand new Tesla for someone that isn’t you. Hey now, sorry about that. Hey now, we can’t all have food. Hey now, we can’t all have a place to live, a sense of safety within skin, VIP access to secretive bank vaults and the specialists at the Mayo Clinic. Hey now, you all just stand right below that window to get my trickle down and hey now, about your pension? Sorry, we were over here making some fucking money! God given rights and God Bless!

“Freedom is the promise and the gift!”

Yeah, kind of, but I’d be just as free in so many other countries, and not go bankrupt if I got sick, or not stuck in dead end jobs to pay off student loans, or wonder what happens to my parents if they can’t afford their advanced age care. Fireworks blow across our dark night sky where some Australian buys a news station and proceeds to divide and brainwash America against itself for his own profit, made entirely too easy because at those never ending party meetings, half the country been told for decades how critical thinking is the work of socialists, the people who hate them and look like somebody else.

“The parade is coming!”

Make way for the pundits and politicians claiming to support the troops while lying to the troops, putting the troops on the street, cutting funding for their lives and aftercare of the troops they cared enough to bullshit into a war(s). I’ve spent years helping the people you throw away, willfully do not see, pretend aren’t there, who get in the way of the myths so told to help the night time sleep. March into the parade and be saluted so you know how much they care, at least on this afternoon and hey, wealthy politician, that’s a nice flag pin on your lapel. Why don’t you hug that symbol one more time with your glossy toothed smile. Better yet, maybe beat up a cop with the pole you hung it from or take it down to replace with the flag of a politician because you believe the lies on the internet, the social media, the television, the radio, the words from these modern day performance artists who dismiss your life like the lawsuit from the judges they appointed. Ask them how much they care the next time they invite you to their house, their boat, their boardroom, their bank account or the elevator meetings with lobbyists.

In America, you’re always the jilted lover of somebody when the wallets run dry.

“We have to stop critical race theory!”

Informed people, informed Americans, informed voters might realize we could have it better if we had a conversation, and they had conversations and then conversations were had about conversations with enough words in enough conversations and suddenly all the people, the Americans, the voters start to realize they got played by the talking heads and the companies and tax breaks and all of these votes and promises and fears and lies were just that, a different kind of truth designed to keep the performance players knee deep in sex workers they didn’t even bother to tip, and with all of those conversations and exponential discussions maybe growing and and multiplying and building and so informed, they vote you out. Can’t leave that to chance. Informed and out, can’t afford the gym membership or the country club membership or the consequences of no longer having federal protection for the lies you told to keep your gym and country club memberships running through all those performance burpees on the Twitter feed. Why build up a country when you can build up a personal brand. Out of office, your Venmo account runs dry. Next thing you know, the sex workers no longer return your calls and nobody looks your way and nobody rings your phone from the Sunday morning nonsense parades.

Consequences.

The first amendment doesn’t protect you from violating the terms of service of a private company, but it will keep the government from throwing you in jail for saying “left wing radical socialist” 10,000 times with an expression always growing more grim before laughing about it later at the bar. Freedom doesn’t mean freedom from consequences, unless your employed by power grifters of media and the whitest of houses all lying about a virus for shits and giggles and profits through the quizzical vocal tones of the sociopath chorus singing their hymns of full hospitals, the same sociopaths whose own lawyers say no one reasonable would really believe the things they say.

America got suckered into irrationality though electronic pulses telling them what to “like.”

Ever notice the questions on Jeopardy get a little easier every year, keeping up with the big dumb down where books are the enemy and misinformation is celebrated?

Fourth of July, I can’t leave it. Botched responses mean I’m not allowed to leave it.

Thanks for day off; it’s the biggest taste of independence I can afford.

So I’ll be over here keeping my dog from losing its fucking mind as a result of your celebratory fireworks. And you all be careful not to lose any fingers, bless your hearts. Lapel pins are harder to attach one handed, and it would be truly tragic to have the size of your patriotism questioned because you were caught without your enamel symbol.

Have a nice day,

• Drake