July 5, 2020, California, USA:
This year, in my local social circles, all the comfortable older nearly retired people with land and as much work as they want seem to disdain any show of patriotiotism, whereas everyone who is younger than them or poor or younger than them and poor (except for the disabled people) quietly went to see fireworks. I am a ham radio user, so when I got on the radio to say I was mobile, everyone younger and one older poor gentleman all came back to say they were going to or coming from seeing the fireworks.
I believe the disabled poor people didn't like fireworks because they weren't able to go watch (no immediately seen upside) and were comfortable enough with the arrangement they have with the elderly wealthy people giving them enough tax money to survive without needing to work. Also, I believe both those groups tend to spend more time indoors viewing television.
Scott Adams has been talking a lot about what people need to believe in, and in a country with freedom of religion, that can be akin to patriotism. Also, I skimmed a few sentences in what Elon Musk referred to today in a tweet ("Read The Story of Civilization by Will & Ariel Durant") in which it said "RELIGIONS are born and may die, but supersition is immortal. Only the fortunate can take [I think he means "live"] life without mythology. Most of us suffer in body and soul, and Nature's subtlest anodyne is a dose of the supernatural."
I saw more unity last night through celebration of fireworks than I saw in the old crabby wealthy people I witnessed in my ham networks and than Scott Adams saw on television fake news sitting comfortably from his well-earned self-made home.
Further, one of our recent debates has been about whether Trump's speech gave way to more unity or more division. Among those who do not seek to celebrate USA as much, the wealthy old and the crippled, I think they saw it as adding gas to the fire of our enemies who claim (at least eminating from TV in comfortable viewing dens) the disagreement is about heritage and race, but to the rest of us, we also see the lies being told by the communist warriors against our country, and we become uncertain, and when we see Trump say this country is for all of us with its warts and successes and we want to do even better, we say, yeah, that's fucking us. Some others in their wisdom of youth knowing that anyone complaining about them has a high probability of being wrong also rightly wanted to participate in the merriment. And in the beginning of the night with a full or eclipsed moon, we go forth and watch & make fireworks, laws be damned. That's my guess of what was happening yesterday night.
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