4th of July, Every Year, Is a Declaration of War

by: E.M. Burlingame

Yeah. You think it's over? You think they planted that flag on the heap of red coats, broken rifles, broken whips and auction blocks and called it a day? You poor, dumb bastard. Slavers. They don't die. They don't surrender. They just… change suits. The face gets softer, maybe. The hands cleaner. The words slicker, dripping with concern, maybe even "progress," "justice," "equity." But the chains? They endure. They're patient. They wait in the basement, gathering dust, ready for the next sucker generation to forget the weight.

Freedom? Don't make me laugh. It's not a destination, pal. It's a bar fight that never ends. You crawl out from under one boot, bloody but breathing, and there's another boot already descending, polished this time, maybe attached to a nice pair of slacks talking about your "best interests." The fight is eternal. The chains are eternal. You loosen one link, another tightens around your kid's neck. You think you're walking free? You're just dragging a longer, thinner chain. It rattles quieter, that's all. So you wear it like a necklace with a cross to make it all right.

Thinking you got yourself loose is the biggest con of all. While others are still sweating under the lash – the real one, or the one made of debt, despair, or digital walls – you ain't free. Their slavery is your cage. It poisons the air you breathe. It whispers in the ear of the guy holding your leash, reminding him how easy it is. Break your own chain? Good start. Now look around. See the others? Until they're loose, truly loose, you're just a well-fed dog on a longer run. Their fight is your fight. Always was. Always will be. Turn your back? That chain gets yanked hard, real hard.

Few. So goddamn few. Have ever tasted real freedom. Even for a heartbeat. Most just trade masters. The plantation boss for the factory boss. The factory boss for the screen boss. The screen boss for the debt boss. We shuffle from cage to cage, calling the new one "opportunity," calling the routine "life." Breaking free? Truly? Seeing the whole stinking Financialist Kill Chain for what it is and spitting in its eye? Seeing the Estrogen-ladden Praetorians for what they are. That takes a kind of crazy most of us lost with our baby teeth. Most never even try. They just polish their particular chain and call it jewelry.

Now, look. The English. Yeah, us. The rum-soaked, poetry-muttering, stubborn bastards. We didn't invent fighting slavery, but by God, we made a bloody sport of it for centuries. We burned the ships. We broke the markets. We wrote laws fueled by rage and maybe a shred of decency buried deep. Wilberforce. Clarkson. Adams. The whole rotten, hypocritical, glorious mess of it. We stood on the decks of warships blockading slavers. We built empires on worse shit, sure, but we also built this idea, deep in the bone: A freeborn Englishman doesn't kneel. That idea? It was forged against the slaver. A thousand years back, Alfred and his lot looked at the Danes dragging Saxons off in ropes and said, "Not here. Not us." That was the seed. That refusal. That spit in the slave-master's eye. That's the bedrock we forgot we stood on.

It took us almost a thousand years to remove it from our own lands, from our own economies. But we did. At immense expense in the lives of our own young men. Our best. Lost in bloody battles and wars. Wars and battles upon wars and battles. It’s that hard to remove. And look what crawled back while we were sleeping off the victory party. Look at the chains now. Not iron. Silken ropes. Digital shackles. Debt serfdom. Thought control disguised as safety. A whole damn system whispering you're free while it picks your pocket and your future. It’s near total. Being fought out in every one of the hundreds of trillions of cells of our bodies. And we let it happen. We traded vigilance for convenience, fury for comfort. We got lazy. We got fat. We forgot the fight is eternal.

So here we are. Back against the chrome-plated wall. It ain't just about this patch of dirt called America. It's about the whole damn inheritance. The idea. The English idea – the one born kicking against chains and blood a millennium ago. The one that echoed in London docks, Boston harbors, Sydney pubs. The idea that a man, a woman, owns their own damn breath from birth to death! That idea is drowning in a sea of compliance and fear. They’re coming for it everywhere. London. Ottawa. Melbourne, San Francisco, New York, Delhi, Karachi, everywhere! The same soft, smiling faces offering the same comfortable chains you’ll be imprisoned and ruined if you don’t put upon yourself.

Time to stand. Not politely. Not with petitions. But with that old, stubborn English fire. With that pub brawler spirit, bloodies its knuckles between pints, for the love of our communities, our lands, our peoples, our civilization and it’s freedoms. For the honor of what's human and right. The fire that burned slave ships. The fire that went to war with tyrants. The fire that said this far, no further. We gotta fight for it here. We gotta fight for it everywhere the language is spoken, because the slavers sure as hell ain't respecting borders. They're global. So the fight has to be too! Only, we gotta win here at first or there’s no chance for anyone to win anywhere.

It ain't patriotism. It's survival. The survival of that one, battered idea planted in the mud and blood a thousand years ago: We. Do. Not. Kneel. Forget it, and the chains click shut forever. Our kids to be sold at the block. Remember? Then maybe, just maybe, we buy ourselves and the next poor bastard another round in this eternal, lousy, necessary fight. Now, on this day, the 4th of July we celebrate a great victory in this Eternal War. That's it. Not the end of the War. Only a great victory. So, pass the bottle. It’s gonna be a long night of memories, a thousand years on. Before the dawn and our joining fully in the fight against slavery in all its many insidious forms. Again!

This is what it means to be American, the inheritors and keepers of the English Civilization. Not that we are free, but that we never cease to stand against slavery. That we have and do and will fight in ruthless blood where we must, to remain free. Living as examples of what it means to be free, what it costs to be free, what must be paid in blood and treasure to be free. An example for the world, for others of our species. Such they, of their own volition, at their own expense, following our example, become and remain free.

For no man, no woman, no child is free unless and until all humanity is free. Freedom which must, eternally, be fought for everywhere, always, in every way!