It’s all over now.

That is, the fireworks, the speechifying, the bbqs — that was yesterday. All our troubles seemed so far away.

Nah. They’re here to stay.

Congress, that DC-based assisted-living facility, is packed with fearful, preening dolts tethered to our government’s teat, blowhards who excel only at sending gimme-money email blasts.

SCOTUS is overrun with aging ideologues in-place until it’s time for their dirt-nap.

The nation’s war on expertise has bequeathed us health leaders who are anti-science, education leaders who are anti-learning, and financial leaders who deride debt and deficits — except for when they don’t.

Sometimes the cavalry doesn’t come. The state of our nation? We’ve scored an own-goal. We did this to ourselves. And we’re too dumb to even have the sense, the awareness, to be ashamed.

It’s always “us” vs. “them”, larded with fear of “the other.” Our leaders invoke “the good old days.” Listen up: there were never really any “simpler times.” Every decade, every generation, faces enormous challenges. The argument “YOUR generation had it SOOO easy!” is SOOO fallacious. Destructive. Polarizing.

I think we need a reboot, a clean reinstall. A countrywide high colonic. The state of the union? Feh. Together we built great things, true. Together, though, we BROKE bigger things. “He” is not the baby with a chainsaw. WE are that baby, threatening the sanctity of the entire planet with our reckless, infantile, societal meltdown. “Waaaaa! Screw everyone, just gimme my Monday Night Football, big-ass TVs, and over-plump Costco rotisserie chickens. Five bucks, baby, what could be bad?”

Well, plenty.

Independence Day harkens back to an era of brave souls who risked all for an ideal. And, let’s not forget, who weren’t down with paying Georgie’s taxes. And who grew vast empires by chasing off indigenous people and harnessing the sweat of the world’s cleapest labor. Slaves.

“I’ll think of it tomorrow…after all, tomorrow is another day,” said Scarlett O’Hara in “Gone With the Wind”. “Tomorrow” is here, folks, and who among us has any notion of citizenship? The concept of “the common good”? We claim to be a Judeo-Christian society and yet those very values have been denigrated.

I take that back, for it’s worse. “Values” are now considered excess baggage, of no worth whatsoever. “I got mine, buddy. Paddle your OWN canoe.”

We soldier on. We fume. We write. We fight. We protest publicly. But in the fencing match of life, there can be no winners, for we have forever locked ourselves into moral positions.

Worse, we’ve become siloed by friends, family, and the myriad media platforms monetized by manipulating socio-political demarcations.

I remember sweet summers of young adulthood in a Litchfield County cabin rented from a UConn professor who vacationed on the Cape. The house abutted a truck farm owned by a guy named Rudy. Most mornings, I rode my motorcycle past sweet-smelling tobacco barns, and around the Barkhamsted reservoir, while my wife wrote a winning novel with her friend, Ken, of blessed memory. The air was fragrant, the skies were blue, the “refreshing tropical drinks” were strong, and plentiful, and taken on cool afternoons on a deck overlooking a duck pond.

Presciently, the tiny town’s theater company would stage “Goodwives & the Gallows”, a cautionary tale of the Connecticut witchcraft panics. “The Other”, indeed.

On July 4th, we’d drive into town, park by the lake, and partake of the village’s celebration. We’d find a grassy spot, spread our beach blanket wide, sip wine, and stare at the star-lit Connecticut sky.

The fireworks would begin. They’d burst just overhead, pound in our chests, and stir great emotion.

For, in the final analysis, what is the appeal of a pyrotechnical display? Our greatest dramatist, Tennessee Williams, used fireworks to great advantage in “Cat On a Hot Tin Roof” and “Summer and Smoke” to underscore moments of great emotional intensity. Fireworks are beautiful. Magical, even. But let us not forget that these sky-bound outbursts are violent and visceral reminders of humankind’s ability to wreak destruction.

On those soft, sweet Connecticut eves, it seemed as if we could reach up, grab those fiery blasts, and keep them close forever and always. We were young, idealistic, and blessed with the promise of success and accomplishments to come.

Today, many decades later, with grey in my beard, I recall these Garth Brooks lyrics: “All my cards are on the table with no ace left in the hole. I’m much too young to feel this damn old.”

Independence Day is, today, simply a time for speechifying, drinking to excess, and Toyotathons. Someday, I’m sure, there will be 9/11 Mattress Firm marathon sales.

Is this really who we are? Is such behavior that on-brand? Is the United States of America nothing more than a vast souk, a global trading post? Trade typically encourages cultural crosstalk, so what happened?

For too many of us, the “American Way of Life” means money. Wealth accumulation. “Not that there’s anything wrong with that” (in “Seinfeld” voice) per se. It’s ok to like nice things. Only, let’s remember our roots. Let’s drop the “zero sum game” M.O., and try and remember that the interconnected strands of a rope make it stronger, not weaker.

My dad fought Nazis in World War II. Do we really have to wage that battle all over again?

I dunno. Sometimes, you just gotta do what you gotta do.