I don't blame you and I know I'm not your friend. How we livin', young American?

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Should I write a post about "freedom" and American independence and July 4th? Surely I should. And I was gonna. BUT:

Honestly, I love July 4th. Its usually my favorite holiday. not because I'm so "rah rah rah" America, but because it combines my favorite three things: Summer, BBQing, and Things Exploding with Bright Colors. Believe me, if Labor Day had fireworks, it'd be golden.

This year was kind of rainy; between that, and the fact that I had work from 8am-4pm (plus not many folks were around for celebrations) I had fairly low expectations. Additionally, when I'm not eating char-grilled snacks, drunken flag-waving, bottle rocket launching patriots seem a lot less tolerable to me. This post was gearing up to be pessimistic and cranky.

Yesterday, however, turned out to be very cool, despite colluding factors which might have made it otherwise. This, to me, was the best part:

After leaving a fireworks display at Sea Cliff beach, this random guy shoves a paper in our hands. Later I'm gonna do my damnedest to scan it in; it's called "The Dispatch: 'This Time, Let Your Truth Prevail -- Rain on the Parade Edition".

[Let me preface the body of this work by saying two things: I have not looked into the veracity of any claims hereafter about deleted paragraphs and such. Also, we got into the car and I read this out loud, in my best Founding Fathers voice, while accompanied by the final three minutes of the 1812 overture.]

"'The Declaration of Independence, The Deleted Paragraph.'

'He, [King George] has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of INFIDEL powers, is the warfare of the CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought and sold, he has prostituted has negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce. And that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the peopleon whom he also obtruded them: thus paying off former crimes committed against the LIBERTIES of nor people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the LIVES of another.' - Thomas Jefferson, The Declaration of Independence (prior to delegate edits)

"While you celebrate our country's 232 year of independence from Great Britain, remember those who were not 'freed' from the so-called yolk of British tyranny in 1776. On July 4th, 1776 while the American aristocracy sat in Philadelphia, patting itself on the back, African slaves continued to toil under the wretched system of chattel slavery - a tyranny worse than those any of the 'founding fathers' ever suffered under.
As reprinted above, The Declaration's writer, Thomas Jefferson, attempted to included a paragraph blasting the King for sanctioning and facilitated [sic] slavery, an evil running in direct contradiction to '...life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness...'
Jefferson, himself a slave owner, was shot down by delegates (primarily from the South) who refused to sign the document should the paragraph stay.
It is an undeniable fact that the omission of the anti-slavery paragraph from the Declarartion Of Independence was the most horrific failure in the founding of this country. It set a precedent which continued more than halfway through the 19th century in the form of chattel slavery, after which manifesting itself solely in the form of anti-black racism/violence which continues to the present.
So, as you celebrate today, take time to remember those who were not freed from tyranny 232 years ago as well as the disastrous injustices that our overwhelmingly racist 'founding fathers' brought unto African slaves and their descendants by not abolishing the practice of slavery on the first day of our independence from great Britain. Not to mention the complete negation of the 'inalienable rights' of those men women and children who inhabited this land prior to the European invasion.
In the end, maybe there is not so much to celebrate..." - Warner Bass

I'm going to let that speak for itself.

Although I will add that the 1812 overture ended on the exact moment I finished reading. If you've ever read any sort of document with a full orchestral accompaniment, you'll understand me when I say: I felt pretty damn majestic.