Last year was hell for my dog up till and especially on the evening of July 4th, so I'm not looking forwards to it. She felt panicky and her body language was that she couldn't get close enough to me for protection, but there was nowhere else to go because the entire neighborhood erupted. This year, because of her fairly recent seizure, I'm truly afraid that the noise will trigger another. So far she has not had another seizure but it was a dramatic when she had it and I thought I would lose her. It almost seemed a miracle that within a couple hours she returned to her status before the seizure. It reminded me of a reboot of a computer.
Another aspect of the holiday is the state of American Patriotism.
Yes, you can criticize the country and still be patriotic. Hopefully your observation that things need to be improved comes with some ideas on how to create that change in a positive way.
However, I and many of my friends feel that absolutely everything has become overly political, especially when certain celebrities use their fame to fan the flames, so to speak. You see, I want entertainment to be relaxing or at least take my attention away from the present for a little while. Whatever the entertainer - be that an actor, musician, sportsperson, whatever - thinks or feels - they are welcome to express on their own time but entire politically correct programs, whole teams held hostage, and so on, is just not right. And I'm now turning off the program when it turns out it's going to be one more event with some sort of intent to indoctrinate.
UPDATE: My dog shook and I held her and stroked her for a long time. Finally, we went to bed and... we woke up to a puddle of pee...
