“The Third of July” — just another date that will now live in infamy…
“It concerns the years past and the shadows they cast…”
“I believe that a thought has just gotten caught, In a place where words can’t surround it. It concerns the years past and the shadows they cast, And my path as I walk around it.” — John Prine, “The Third of July” (2003)
I couldn’t watch much of the dystopian spectacle at Mount Rushmore yesterday, but I did tune in briefly before the Dear White Leader paid homage to our Great White Fathers, whose likenesses (I’m sure you already know) were carved into the Lakota Sioux’s “Six Grandfathers” by a Klansman — on stolen Native American land.
While John Prine’s “The Third of July” might have been appropriate for the occasion, an outraged Canadian who “stand[s] in solidarity with the Lakota Sioux” (and often sings with an American band named Crazy Horse) appears to have received top billing in the pre-game music — which featured both “Rockin’ in the Free World” and “Like a Hurricane.”
Yet it was much more fitting, I thought, to play Funeral for a Friend, Love Lies Bleeding (by a British Knight of course) since it spoke powerfully to both the public health risks from the event itself and the current national reckoning with our past, as well as the present and our future.
“The Third of July” — just another date that will now live in infamy…
With hopes for a more Glorious Fourth in the future, after we all vote!
“My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right.” — Carl Schurz (1872)
