Jennifer Neal: The Endless Fluorescent Spectacle of Domination Dressed Up as Freedom

 Wow. Excellent. Blessed are 

the truth-tellers!

― Molly

Does anyone else remember when the #UFC was banned in 36 states? Does anyone else remember when it lived out on the edges of American culture, not exactly underground, but close enough, tucked away in the strange little back room of Blockbuster (ah, Blockbuster, I miss you!!), where the only way to watch weeks-old fights was to rent a VHS tape after the blood had already dried and the spectacle had already moved on without you?

I do. I remember when it was considered too brutal, too grotesque, too much, too nakedly honest about what it was selling. Last night, there it was. On the lawn of the White House. The People’s House.

A cage. A crowd. A president. A birthday party. A country turning 250 years old and somehow deciding that the most fitting image for our great national celebration was bodies beating bodies under lights while people roared and money moved and billionaires who have bent a knee smiled for the cameras.

I am not here to tell anyone how to celebrate life, liberty, adrenaline, testosterone, capitalism, pain, pleasure, sport, ritual, rage, or whatever else gets folded into the octagon like a bruised American flag. People are allowed to love what they love. People are allowed to watch grown adults choose to fight one another for money while the crowd turns into a single hungry animal with a thousand open mouths. Have at it.

But not there. Not on that lawn. Not at the White House. Not as a celebration of anything close to the values of the America I still believe in, the America I keep trying to find beneath the rubble of a missing East Wing, beneath the noise, beneath the chrome-plated cruelty and merch-table patriotism and the endless fluorescent spectacle of domination dressed up as freedom.

We are a massive and diverse country. Yes. We fight. Yes. We have always fought. We fought for independence. We fought to end slavery. We fought for the right to vote. We fought for labor rights, civil rights, women’s rights, queer rights, disability rights, bodily autonomy, dignity, bread, shelter, clean water, clean air, the right to love who we love and live in the body we actually have without being hunted for it.

That kind of fighting I understand. That kind of fighting I honor. That kind of fighting built the best parts of us.

What happened last night felt less like a celebration of America and more like a mirror held too close to our face, so close we could see every pore, every bruise, every busted vessel, every place where we the people have been biting the inside of our own cheeks for so long with so much anxiety, we have forgotten that the taste of blood is not the same thing as freedom.

There are wars we are involved in. Lots of them. There are families afraid to go to the grocery store. There are children hungry in the richest country on earth. There are people disappearing into systems with no accountability. There are grandparents choosing between medicine and rent. There are neighbors sleeping outside while billionaires launch their egos into the sky and call it innovation.

Perhaps, in the ugliest and saddest possible way, this was the perfect celebration of America at 250. A cage on the lawn. A photogenic perfect chosen crowd cheering. Power watching from the best seat in the house.

How unbearably and horrifying. Still, some stubborn little fire in me refuses to go out. I can only hope that next year, for 251, we will find ourselves somewhere other than here. Not geographically. Morally.

― Jennifer Neal