Well. It’s that time of year again. Every fourth day of every seventh month, most cities and definitely every unwashed backwater of this Godforsaken nation partake in some gaudy imperial pageantry to celebrate some uppity, rich colonists’ uprising less than three centuries ago. I’m speaking, of course, of America’s Birthday since this is our fine publication’s July issue. Independence Day isn’t just the best Roland Emmerich film and possibly the best ensemble disaster film of all time; it is also what Canada’s pants and Mexico’s hat use as an excuse to celebrate that independence by blowing up a small part of it. RIP Apu. All jokes aside, this propaganda-laden holiday got me thinking about our current national anthem.
A quick history lesson...
The melody of this song is actually the official "theme tune for an 18th-century gentlemen’s club in London, the Anacreontic Society. That’s right. Our national anthem’s melody is lifted from a drunken ditty from the upper-class folks we were literally at war against. Known as either the "The Anacreontic Song" or "To Anacreon In Heaven," apparently, this melody was fitted with whatever lyric fit the mood of the occasion and was well known not only in Britain but in the colonies by the time our sappy local boy, Francis Scott Key, penned his drivel.
Second important note...
The poem he wrote, now our most-familiar lyric to this melody, officially titled "Defence of Fort M’Henry," was penned during the War of 1814, a good minute or two after the Revolutionary War.
Third important note...
Although the American Navy frequently used Key’s lyrics with this Limey melody as early as the late 1800s, it wasn’t recognized as the official national anthem until nineteen-fucking-thirty-one, by a congressional resolution signed by Herbert Hoover—definitely one of the least-sexiest presidents.
1931...
I apologize for this tangent, but I think it’s necessary to hammer down the point that not only do you have no fucking obligation to stand for this war poem set to a British drinking song during a gladiatorial event—sorry—sports game, but I think this proves, we as a nation, are well within our right to change our national theme song, since not only is this ditty a fairly recent conceit, but also not entirely American.
It’s an understatement to say America is changing and is probably going to change a whole lot more, what with current events. I think it’s entirely appropriate to suggest some alternative sing-alongs to celebrate this less-functional Rome. It’s 2022. Time to Pimp Our Anthem. Come 2031, the current ditty will only have been our official imperial march for a hundred years. It had a good life, but time to switch it up.
I mean...hey, it’s called The National Anthem. And yes, those blokes are Brits, but so were the fuckers that wrote the current tune, so this is fair game. I imagine this would be appropriate if a Musk or Bezos type becomes the de facto emperor of our nation and we become a space-faring, hyper-fascist colonizing force. This song just nails the vibe of a soulless technocratic dictatorship that justifies mass slaughter and resource extraction through spreadsheets and profit-based research. Like John Williams’ theme for that movie with the shark, this two-note foreboding plod seems like the perfect thing to blare through our war—cough—commerce ships’ loudspeakers as we bulldoze a path through the cosmos, increasing efficiency and productivity. I just hope all the lads in Radiohead are dead by the time their transcendent song is used to celebrate interstellar genocide.
I think this is the song of choice if we just sorta stay the course of this distraction-riddled, consumer-based economy. I’m not sure this song works at a baseball game, but it does fit the mood of our current state to a T. Maybe we’d get more young people to vote if this heart-wrenching diatribe against the loneliness, alienation, dissolution, disaffection, and emotional dismemberment of our shared experience played when we swore in another useless puppet that kept asking us to buy things, so the machine kept working. At least it would be honest.
So. If things go according to plan and the massive resurgence of unions in America catches across all workforces, we may actually see some tangible change in the quality of life for most Americans. If we can crack Amazon and Starbucks, we can crack every evil chain across this land, that is your land and also my land. It’s a shame that some revolutions gone sideways in Russia and China killed the socialist movement in the crib in America in the ’20s and ’30s because of optics. However, since literally no one can afford to pay rent anymore, I believe this old-school, leftist vibe has a good chance of catching fire once more. If it does, then what better way to celebrate turning a make-believe landowner fantasy into an actual working-class utopia than with a song that brutally reminds us that your boss is never your friend and you owe the fruits of your labor to no one.
This is one of those worst-case scenarios for our country, but entirely plausible. Let’s say the Dimestore Northman cosplayers, and Fred Perry shirt-wearing motherfuckers succeed in a second coup and devolve this country into something that even Margaret Atwood would deem too unrealistic. Although the technocratic nightmare described in the Radiohead song, with its efficiency and progress, seems like it would better fit this anthem, I don’t think Muskians would appreciate the blatant satire. However, folks who worship a rich New Yorker born into wealth and focused on only acquiring more wealth and being popular are clearly easily duped. It is not unreasonable that this new America could listen to this melody and lyrics and think that they are not only serious but also totally awesome. This entry may or may not have come from a fever dream of a choir of bible-belt, prayer-study suburbanites singing it at the top of their lungs at Superbowl LXX and believing every word as totally sincere. This is Mr. Garrison’s American anthem, and it can be yours too if you continue to give Tucker Carlson airtime.
