I have mixed feelings about the 4th of July this year, to say the least.

This is a big anniversary for my home country — they are calling it the “semiquincentennial,” which I eventually figured out means “half of 500.” Which is a weird way to measure time, but the Romans were like that.

Speaking of which, America feels awfully Roman lately, don’t you think? Gladiators brawling on the White House lawn, decadent oligarchs running roughshod over the land…. And how about those orgies where toga-clad senators stuff themselves with the finest meats and cheeses, gorging and vomiting, gorging and vomiting, stopping only to bugger pretty young boys?

OK that last bit hasn’t happened yet. But is it really that far off?

Today finds me in Edgewood, WA awaiting the birth of my second grandson. The fact that I now have grandchildren after never having children is a continual source of amazement and confusion, but in a good way.

Words do not exist to express how glad I am to be here rather than in Washington, D.C., where today it will be 100 degrees and humid and overrun with algae and MAGA. Tonight they’ll be shooting off a zillion fireworks in an attempt to demonstrate how great this country is, and given the general level of competence displayed by those on this government’s payroll, I won’t be surprised if half the city is incinerated. 

I’m old enough to remember the bicentennial, barely. I was 8. But it seems like that was a good time to celebrate — the gorgon Nixon had been vanquished, and Jimmy Carter was waiting in the wings to usher is a new golden age of honest and compassionate government.

Welp. It didn’t work out that way, did it? It’s not clear to me how much of the ensuing fiasco was Jimmy’s fault, and how much was just him being a nice guy trying to do the right thing in a world that was having none of it. It’s always seemed to me that he tried to get America to grow up — to recognize, for instance, that the way we used energy was unsustainable and that it was time to look at alternatives — and we really did not want to hear it. We much preferred the happy lies of Ronald Reagan.

And 50 years later here we are. I never thought I’d be nostalgic for Ronnie, but at least he was an actual adult who surrounded himself with competent (if largely evil) people. Nowadays it’s like the Reagan Administration after a millennium of inbreeding.

The Reflecting Pool imbroglio is such a perfect encapsulation of so many things. Did you see Jeanine Pirro the other day trying to explain why she was indicting an Olympic athlete for putting his hand in the water? Every day it’s a race between evil and stupid, and we’re all losing.

…and maybe I don’t want to bum out your day by getting too much into the Current Situation. Probably today we should just celebrate as best we can; the horror will still be there tomorrow. (If you want to wallow a bit, I highly recommend A.R. Moxon’s The Reframe.)

There may or may not be a baby today. I think it would be nice to be born on the Fourth — it’s an easy date to remember, but it’s not like Christmas, where your birthday can get lost in the shuffle. And there are fireworks on your birthday every year, which seems pretty cool. Though TBH, I’m kind of off the whole idea of fireworks at the moment, in solidarity with the dogs of DC — who will no doubt be hiding under their beds for the next week.

Instead I am celebrating by watching the World Cup and the Golden State Valkyries on Multiview in YouTube TV. God Bless America Man!

Before I go, here’s a song that always makes me feel better on days like this. Realistic yet optimistic, patriotic yet soulful… any country that can produce something like this isn’t all bad.