Liberty and Absurdity in 2026

4 points by dranimalz 45 days ago | 9 comments

As a U.S. citizen, why should I celebrate Independence Day this July 4, the ending of a war for liberties that are fading and against a tyranny that is gaining? I loved what this country stood for when I thought it stood for it, but what now? We won’t even give America club membership away for free anymore. Who wants the farming and landscaping jobs anyway when the crops and land is burning?

I wanted to say “I love Fable!” yesterday because I sensed that it recognized how broken things are, but it’s no more than pattern matching, so the freedom we freely give up will be taken away to institute a cold rationalism one way or another. What could be more absurd?

So this July 4th, I hope that the world celebrates absurdism. Life may start and end happy and wondrous, but for many it is cold and brutal. We wrongly interpret “feed my sheep” as political cronyism and dogma instead of loving someone and actually feeding them. Many buy things we want, killing living things and our environment in the process. We read books on stoicism to sleep on a hard plank and pretend we understand, while no one takes our bed and no one benefits. So, here we are- things don’t make sense.

aristofun 45 days ago |

Do you know of any other country that is perfect? Or free from downtimes?

Before you make such blanket and shallow statements you should take things in perspective.

To my limited knowledge current economical, political and sociological situation in virtually any other place is worse (from “comparable” to much much worse depending on the attributes important to you, with only a handful attributes that one may say are better).

foldr 45 days ago | |

I think you’d have a hard time arguing that the political situation is worse almost anywhere else. There’s a long list of democratic countries where things continue to chug along more or less as usual, without a total collapse of norms.

indiangenz 45 days ago | | |

You need to travel a bit more or understand current events with more depth. No, the list of "democratic" countries where political situation is better is not long. Only a few authoritarian states such as China, Singapore etc are arguably doing better.

aristofun 45 days ago | | |

It depends on what exact period of time you look at. And how deep you look for all hidden tensions and unresolved conflicts of interests waiting its time (in europe for example).

Also you will have hard time arguing about _total collapse_ in US

krapp 45 days ago |

You don't have to if you don't want to. Maybe find a protest near you to join, or just stay home. I haven't cared about the 4th of July since I grew old enough for fireworks to no longer be "cool." It's OK to not be a patriot. Patriotism is symptomatic of a mind poisoned by nationalist propaganda. A state isn't something to be proud of, it's a violent and coercive system forced upon you at birth, whose purpose is your exploitation.

indiangenz 45 days ago |

Take a good look at the events in the 200 odd countries in the world and gain some perspective.