This was a low-key 4th for the Simpsons. Our city does the fireworks on the 3rd, and since we live about half a mile from the university field where they are shot off, we walked there and back for the festivities, and spent the rest of the holiday weekend reading, eating and feeling grateful.
Not so our fellow citizens on the left, apparently. A quick trip around the internet showed the most vocal of our political rivals doing what they do best: treating our country the way Amber Heard treated Johnny Depp’s bed.
Breitbart had a nice round-up of celebs airing their malice and grievances. Bette Midler is still alive… and hates the country. So is “Meathead” Reiner, and George Takei, and they both concur.
Jessica Chastain used some ironic quotation marks around “Independence” Day and had her picture taken giving a double middle-finger salute. (Classy!) Ron Perlman is as attractive on the inside as he is on the outside, and he’s very upset with America.
Several actors I’ve never heard of – Joshua Malina? Kerry Washington? – are also extremely peeved. Alleged comedian Samantha Bee gave a cheerful shout-out to “every woman who is able to live the life she wants because of an abortion.”
I’m no life coach – although I’d be as good a life coach as Samantha Bee is a comedian – but I’d say that a good rule of thumb is that if you need to abort your child to live the life you want, you are doing life wrong.
Also, Samantha Bee must have a show called “Full Frontal,” because that was the tag line for her tweet. And there’s another mental image that I can’t unsee!
Speaking of which, it looks like Jay Z has REALLY let himself go! He looked awful in a still shot beneath the hashtag #happybacktoslaveryday.
Oh, wait. That wasn’t Jay Z – it was unfunny comedienne Leslie Jones from SNL.
So… good for Jay Z, I guess. But Leslie… yikes!
And it wasn’t just spoiled and narcissistic leftist celebrities who despise our country. Spoiled and narcissistic leftist non-celebs feel the same way.
The Pima County (AZ) Democrat Party, for example, invited people to come to their “F*** the Fourth” event, distributing a flyer with those words on them. (They didn’t use the asterisks though, because they are not as dignified as your humble Roving Correspondent.)
When the predictable Schumer-storm ensued, the Dems apologized, agreeing that “the graphic advertising…was in poor taste.”
They couldn’t leave it alone, though, lest the public think that they’re not really down on America. “Make no mistake, however. We support the event…”
For most of the outraged left, the main problem with America this year is that the Supreme Court followed the constitution in the Dobbs case. But several of the illiterati were also mad that Donald Trump isn’t in jail, and that the constitution was written a long time ago by white guys.
Every Fourth they’ve got new reasons to disdain the country. For four years running it was Trump. Also racism, and Pence, and heterosexuality. Before that it was Bush, and slavery, and inequality, and the environment.
They’re never rebels without a cause, but they’re always rebels without a coherent argument.
But even as I found myself getting angry with them, I realized that they’re already punishing themselves more than anything any of us could do to them. (Without going to jail, anyway!)
How would you like to be them? To wake up every morning — living lives of unimaginable comfort and blessings in the greatest country the world has ever known — and look around yourself, and feel nothing but scorn and bitterness for your country and your fellow citizens?
I’m so grateful that the world I see looks nothing like what they see!
This Independence Day, I’ve had the opportunity to think about how well things have gone – for me personally, for my free state of Florida, and for our country – in so many unlikely (even far-fetched!) ways that I never could have predicted.
For example, in the winter of 1985, I was finishing up my MA at Illinois State (Go Redbirds!), and didn’t know what my next step in life was. Going on for a PhD sounded like as good an idea as any, so I went to the university library and looked through some academic catalogues. (This was before the internet, and the wheel. But after fire – so I had that going for me.)
Because it was freezing outside, I gravitated to some schools from the south. And as I flipped through catalogues, I came across the one for the University of Florida, and saw that it was in Gainesville. And the clouds parted, and a choir sang, as I realized the perfect reason for making such a momentous life decision:
Tom Petty was from there!
That’s right. I made the biggest decision of my adult life because of Tom Petty and a handful of Heartbreakers. It was a sign from God!
Actually, I do think that, to this day.
Because at that very moment, my future wife was sharing an apartment in Gainesville with a married couple from her high school. The husband was starting in the same UF grad program that accepted me, and he happened to live right across the street from the apartment I rented. And on our first night of orientation, his wife had their car, so I asked him if he needed a ride home.
I was going to just drop him off, but as we pulled into their apartment complex, he said, “By the way, a blonde Norwegian goddess lives with us.”
And I said, “It’s funny you should mention that, because I’ve been looking for one of those.”
And 34 years ago tonight, with the fireworks going off over downtown Gainesville, I asked her to marry me.
What a freakishly unlikely series of events! It’s the kind of story that will turn you into a cautious optimist!
A similar lucky break happened for my state, just 4 years ago, when Ron DeSantis ran for governor against Democrat Andrew Gillum. Florida was a closely divided state, and Gillum actually lead in the polls for most of the race, but DeSantis pulled out a razor-thin win by less than a percentage point.
This despite the fact that Gillum had been a dismal candidate, dogged by ethics scandals, a featherweight political resume, and an all-too-familiar tendency to resort to racial identity politics. (He is black.)
DeSantis has turned out to be an amazing governor, providing a textbook example of good leadership by doing exactly the opposite of what Dem governors and Biden have done. Though I am generally loathe to trust any politician – “Put not your faith in princes,” the Psalmist reminds us – I would be beyond thrilled if DeSantis won the presidency in 2024.
Meanwhile, Gillum has proven what a terrible choice he would have been. In March of 2020 he was found vomiting and intoxicated in a hotel room full of meth, along with a gay male escort who had overdosed on said meth, and had to be rushed to the hospital.
Oh yeah, and last month, Gillum and an associate were indicted on 21 counts of conspiracy and wire fraud.
That’s the guy who came within a whisker of defeating the best governor in these united states!
Similarly, the long-shot victory of Donald Trump in 2016 was an incredible stroke of luck for our nation.
There’s a lot I don’t like about Trump, but I cannot understand the never-Trumpers who still insist that his election was a bad thing. Leave aside the existential terribleness of his opponent, and the many successes of Trump’s presidency: record low unemployment, low inflation, strong economic growth and stock market, energy independence, the Abraham Accords, etc..
If he had done nothing else than appoint Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett to the Supreme Court, his presidency would have been a success. The incredible run of SCOTUS decisions this term constitutes victories for our country that will be felt for decades.
But just like DeSantis edging out Gillum, and me closing my smoke-show of a top-shelf wife, it was a very close-run thing! With the MSM and the GOP establishment against him, and his own high negatives in much of the country, Trump got just enough votes in just the right states to win.
And he couldn’t have done it without help from the most unlikeable candidate in presidential history: the clumsy, off-putting, cringe-inducing, inept, cawing maw of amoral ambition that is Hillary Clinton. God bless her!
But even with all of that, it was STILL a long shot to end up with the SCOTUS that we have.
When Scalia died (peace be upon him!), Trump was trailing badly in the polls, and we had to depend on Cocaine Mitch McConnell to stiffen his spine – not an easy task for a chinless cartoon turtle! – and resist Obama and the MSM for nearly a year, and not allow Merrick Garland to take the open seat on the court.
It was the right thing to do, with plenty of precedent to back it up, but with the Dems howling, none of us would have been surprised to see a GOP pol fold. (And after what we’ve learned from Garland since then, he’s proven to be every bit the extreme leftist in sheep’s clothing that we all suspected.)
And then, RBG died, just in time to be replaced by an originalist judge as Trump was on his way out the door. Obama and the Dems had tried to get Ginsburg to retire earlier, and if the overwhelming consensus hadn’t been that Trump was going to lose in 2016, she probably would have.
But the stars aligned, and fate smiled on us once again!
Even with everything else going wrong during the Brandon mal-administration, it’s been a joy to watch the outraged howling of the leftists as SCOTUS went on the greatest two-week run in judicial history.
I’ve especially enjoyed the impotent, small-scale destruction wrought by the pro-abortion creeps calling themselves “Ruth Sent Us,” in honor of their heroine RBG. Because the irony is delicious!
If RBG hadn’t narcissistically refused to step down in the belief that CAW CAW couldn’t lose, Trump wouldn’t have gotten his third nominee, and Roe wouldn’t have fallen.
So as it turns out, Ruth Sent US, you pouting, childish, cowardly vandals!
Here’s to more against-all-odds wins for those who celebrate the 4th, and more heartburn-inducing losses for those who denigrate it!
Avenatti/ Andrew Gillum, 2024!
Martin Simpson 