The Independence Day Massacre

Independence is the human separation individuation process on a geopolitical scale. It’s the phylogenic manifestation of the human need for identity, with borders being like the ego which is limned by the epidermis. So in one sense it's not surprising that besides the Magna Carta of 1215, Martin Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses in 1517, the American Revolution of 1776, the French revolutions of l789 and 1848, the l905 and l917 revolutions in Russian, the non-violent revolution led by Gandhi which freed India from British in 1947, that revolution is constantly percolating on both microcosmic and macrocosmic levels. Ibsen’s A Doll’s House is about an awakening by a woman in a household and it was truly revolutionary for the time as was Kate Chopin’s novel The Awakening published in l899, but revolution is literally lurking around the corner. As if al-Qaeda wasn’t radical enough, ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) has challenged their predecessor and in a predictably  human state of affairs been repudiated by its forbears. Some people will remember the moment in the movie The Jazz Singer when an Orthodox Jewish cantor played by Lawrence Olivier repudiates his son Jess Robin aka Yussel Rabinovich (Neil Diamond) who wants to make it in the secular world. Independence Day is a celebration of national unity, but it comprises a paradox in that independence is a viral instinct that contains the seeds of its own destruction. It’s apt that back in l996 Independence Day was the title of for a disaster film, starring Will Smith, Bill Pullman and Jeff Goldblum.

The Committee Against Obligatory Happy Holidays Salutations

The Committee Against Obligatory Happy Holidays Salutations met on Christmas Eve at the Columbia University Sundial, which was the site of many of the great demonstrations of the 1960s. Old members of the Committee remembered the bearded student leader Mark Rudd handing out screeds as the winds blew across the Hudson over forty years before. The turnout was so great, the response so enthusiastic, that Committee members agreed to hold a congress in Yalta, where Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill had met in the waning days of the Second World War. The Committee elected officers and a treasurer and then began writing a charter, based on the Magna Carta, which would deal with the rights of citizens to refrain and even resist Happy Holidays salutations. Despite the invidious associations with the tea party, “no taxation without representation” was repeatedly evoked in addressing these verbal assaults, which are so taxing. It was agreed that the first clause of the charter would read, “No holiday is worth celebrating,” under the theory that the absence of value would preclude any need for positive reinforcement. A holiday spirit inadvertently prevailed, to the extent that there was no shortage of volunteers willing to participate in outreach towards victims of Happy Holidays salutations all across the world. It was decided that determining how to remove Happy Holidays salutations from electronic media, including e-books and Kindle, would be on the agenda for the next meeting of the Committee.