recent supreme court rulings<\/a>, bills being passed in states prohibiting accurate puberty and sex education, the banning of books, oppression, and literally just every other problem we\u2019re facing; it just feels like we\u2019re moving backwards in so many ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAs someone who doesn\u2019t have the same privilege as the people making these decisions and passing these bills, it\u2019s really hard to just sit back and watch this, internalize it as normal, and then turn around and feel good about this country that is trying to discard people like me and others who are even less fortunate and privileged than I am.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Here\u2019s my feelings about current America: we\u2019re an extremely greedy, capitalistic society. We believe that we live in a federation, a presidential system, a constitutional republic, but you have to question whether or not all that still rings true.
Personally, I believe we\u2019ve become more of an oligarchy\u2014a country run by a few select power-hungry privileged people who belong to the dominant cultures (white, male, high socioeconomic status, straight, cisgender) in our society. I can\u2019t even say, underneath all that, that we\u2019re still in a presidential system, because the supreme court seems to be holding a lot more power than Biden, or maybe Biden just doesn\u2019t care enough to reverse the damage done. If he wanted to, he could. Constitutionally and legally, he would be able to override the supreme court rulings, but personally I just don\u2019t think he cares enough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Maybe that\u2019s just the cynic in me. Maybe I should have more pride in my country, especially considering I’m a third generation American, but when my country just made rulings less than a week ago making it harder for so many to get into college, to reinstate business principles that are reminiscent of holocaust times and the segregation era, and making it so my parents can\u2019t pay off their student loan debt, it makes me really question how much they care about us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Here\u2019s the point I\u2019ve reached: our government places more value on our economy than our people. Although, I think that it would\u2019ve been a very smart move for our economy to relieve student debt, because people\u2019s credit scores would improve so much more and they\u2019d be able to make more purchases, causing more profit being made, but hey\u2014that\u2019s just me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While I love this country in that I think we\u2019ve got some really beautiful parts of it geographically and historically, I\u2019d say we also have some really bloody parts of history, and a bit of a bloody present, that are really hard to neglect.
So for me, Independence Day is bittersweet. I recognize the journey my grandpa made to come here for a better opportunity and the amount of struggle so many people have made to change the way things are. I recognize how far we have come since even just twenty years ago. I\u2019m proud of that. What I\u2019m not proud of is a lot of the decisions that are currently being made. They don\u2019t represent us all as Americans, only a certain percentage of Americans. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, should we celebrate the Fourth of July?
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To answer, sure, if you want to. Obviously no one is forcing you to or not to celebrate. Who am I to tell you what to do?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To pose ourselves as being the best country, though? There\u2019s a problem there. American exceptionalism is not exceptional, and we need to recognize the systemic racism, sexism, homophobia, discrimination, and classism that many Americans face each day. While we have advantages that other countries don\u2019t have, we also have some disadvantages and we need to fix those\u2014not just ignore them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Thank you for reading, and happy Independence Day!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
From the fireworks to hot dogs, most people see Independence Day as a day to celebrate the United States of America, but should we really still be celebrating this holiday? Should we celebrate a country with countless problems […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":247,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[83,59,84,86,85],"ppma_author":[33],"authors":[{"term_id":33,"user_id":6,"is_guest":0,"slug":"mj","display_name":"MJ","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/9527126ec4c26a19870254f2baaf61bf?s=96&d=mm&r=g","first_name":"MJ","last_name":"","user_url":"","description":"MJ (she\/her). Likes writing, reading, learning languages, and studying human behavior. Personality type: INTJ"}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qyavoices.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qyavoices.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qyavoices.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qyavoices.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qyavoices.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/qyavoices.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":248,"href":"https:\/\/qyavoices.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245\/revisions\/248"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qyavoices.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qyavoices.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qyavoices.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qyavoices.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qyavoices.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}