In case you were wondering, the title is from a Bad Religion song. It’s called Atomic Garden. The line is, “I like the 4th of July/when bombs start flashing.” I think they were trying to be prophetic. I don’t know. Anyway, I just thought I would leave today’s post in their hands. I just don’t have the energy to write the obligatory “Independence Day is idolatrous” post. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We get it. It’s the holiest day of the nation-state’s liturgical year. People pledging their allegiance to a deity-endorsed political experiment rooted in a discourse that has historically been as exclusionary as anything ever constructed (sorry, Enlightenment, you didn’t save us from the big bad church–your grammar and forms of life are every bit as vile, violent, and imperialistic as the religion you replaced). Today, our bodies will be disciplined by the nation’s religious rituals via it’s chief holy day (holiday) while we pretentiously imagine that we’re not “really celebrating that aspect of it–it’s just a time to be with family”–which is, of course, the other great idolatry vexing us. So, no energy for such things. Instead, I shall spend today listening to Propagandhi, Crass, and the early work of Against Me! Well, maybe not Crass. I mean, they are British . . . (Ahh, get it? See what I did there? See? Yeah.)
Greg is a bit didactic, right? He’d made just as good of a Southern Baptist preacher as he does a preacher of naturalism and materialism.