Leftridge: Happy 4th, Unless Obama Has His Way

The hardest part about celebrating America’s Independence Day isn’t grilling the perfect hamburger, or selecting an appropriate array of beers to wow your guests. It’s not trying to keep your dog from nervous-urinating all over your carpet at the sound of the explosions or trying to decide which civic or corporate display to go see. (I grew up watching Worlds of Fun’s celebration from far away, sitting on a hill with a bunch of other low-rent dirt-bag families.)

Anymore, it’s about dealing with the declining personal liberties of our once great nation. To put it bluntly, you can’t light off your own fireworks almost anywhere anymore, without feeling the wrath of an overzealous local police department. Not even in the comfort of your own living room:

@StanfordWhistle Not in KC,MO. The firefighters also would probably not appreciate that.

— Kansas City Police (@kcpolice) July 3, 2014

Look, I get it: setting off indoor fireworks isn’t the safest thing in the world. But you know what? Neither is a Monster Thickburger from Hardee’s and if I want to eat two of those things like I did for lunch today, is it any of the government’s business? I don’t fucking think so.

See, it starts simply with a stupid-as-shit ordinance that keeps me from entertaining my guests– INDOORS, mind you– with a small display featuring Roman Candles. But it doesn’t end there. It never does. The government is like your terrible ex-wife Stacia; give them an inch, and they take a fucking MILE, man.

Next thing you know, you can’t walk around Target with a fully loaded semi-automatic assault rifle. (See the recent internet news stories, because this is REALLY HAPPENING, SHEEPLE.)

Then, Obama is showing up at your goddamned door at three in the morning (well, his goon-squad I mean– that pussy-coward is probably in bed, jacking off to pictures of dead bald eagles) and they’re ready to pin you with a tattoo on your arm. I don’t know what it’ll be yet– maybe like, an upside-down American flag on fire or something shitty like that– but it’ll basically mean that you’re a TRAITOR and a DANGER TO THE DICTATORSHIP. What it’ll really mean, however, is that you’re a goddamned patriot.

And while you’d love to wear that badge with honor, it’s no longer safe to be a patriot, because while the one Obamastalin is tattooing you and your scared wife and your little babies, the other ones are going through your house and confiscating all of your guns, and some other ones are probably pissing on the framed copy of the constitution you hang above your bed.

After that, Benghazi probably.

Seriously, I normally shy away from political stuff because I’ll admit: I really don’t know what a government is or does. But when it starts stealing all of my freedoms, you better fucking recognize that I’ll see it.

When I was young, I loved the 4th of July. I loved what it represented and how important it was to us as a nation.

I loved getting together at my step-uncle Brian’s house. We’d have a feast of epic proportions throughout the course of the day, the best kind of shit food-stamps and social security earnings could provide. The adults would drink lots of Busch Light and all of us kids would drink cans of Shasta. We’d spend the afternoon hours trying to horribly mutilate our GI Joes with Black Cats, and a couple of times, we taped grasshoppers to bottle rockets. (Pro-tip: this doesn’t work.)

Then, as the sun would lower on our majestic homeland, the real fun would start.

We’d all gather on dilapidated lawn chairs in the dogshit-strewn backyard and crane our necks skyward. Randy the Trucker–who was probably fucking my aunt AND my step-uncle Brian both– would take his post behind all of the gigantic sky-rockets he’d stolen from the back of the Worlds of Fun truck he was once tasked with driving.

And he’d light them off, but because we were all idiot white-trash folk in the backyard of a terrible house that was only owned because Brian’s mom died and he inherited it, nobody knew how to actually make them work. And so under a cooling, evening drizzle, they’d only go up a few feet into the air and explode, raining fire on the spectators below.

And sure my feeble grandfather’s poncho caught on fire and people had to throw him to the ground and stomp on his to put him out. But you know what? He lived.

And to me, this is freedom.

My grandpa catching on fire is a constant reminder that people live even if you accidentally set them on fire with stolen professional fireworks. And this revelation was only possible because in the olden days, people minded their own goddamned business. Sure, fireworks were still illegal, but you know what? Nobody called the cops on us, even when they heard my grandpa screaming in pain and all of the children crying. It was life. Nobody back then wanted Obummer riding into the neighborhood (probably in a BMW or a VOLKSWAGEN or a SAAB or something else Hitler would have driven) and executing everyone to death.

Now, I feel like that’s all changed. And it’s depressing as shit, but what can you do? I guess we can impeach the sonofabitch. So if you do nothing else this 4th of July, make sure you tell everyone you know that we need to VOTE TO IMPEACH OBAMBA.

Have a great holiday, KCC!