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| Interdependence Day, 2025, watercolor and fabric. |
The jingoistic concussions I'm hearing through the filter of my windows and walls right shake like signifiers of the toxic 'merikinity that has only grown more insipid, and inane with everyone of the 249 observations of the U.S. Independence Day.
The original declaration of this new, very imperfect, but self-determined union was a global anomaly in 1776. Our inheritance ought to be the responsibility to make it the norm, throughout the world. Unfortunately, the fixation on that one great moment a quarter of a millennium past is a pass on reflecting on how we today are upholding the principles stated in the Declaration of Independence.
To enjoy a right or freedom to the exclusion of another elevates one to the status of a middle management autocrat. It's a passive promotion, but one born of our privilege, and it's one we wear unquestioningly in our indifference to the billions of non lottery winners.
I'm no longer observing Independence Day for the freedom of one relies on the freedom of all. Freedom of the sort we celebrate has come to be seen as some inherent sign of the quality of our character. A right bestowed upon only the deserving....which is us, the chosen. And so a religion was formed and deformed in time into a cult.
So now, I observe Interdependence Day, for the freedom of one is actually dependent on the freedom of all. For if not all are free, the freedom we assume, is actually a tyranny of which we are on the high side of.
One of those imperfect men who kicked off this notion of self determination, Thomas Jefferson, wrote a letter, excerpted below to the Mayor of Washington as a response to an invitation to join the Independence Day celebration in that city 1826:
May it be to the world, what I believe it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all,) the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government. The form which we have substituted restores the free right to the unbounded exercise of reason, and freedom of opinion. All eyes are opened or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the lights of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God. These are grounds of hope for others—for ourselves let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollections of these rights, and an undiminished devotion to them.
