It's interesting how many Americans on my facebook account posted the Guy Fawkes Night rhyme in their status updates. "Remember, remember the fifth of November...", they all write, which is kinda funny given that some of these folks could barely tell me on what day Pearl Harbor occured or what the Treaty at Appomattox was. Now I'm no snob and believe me, having suffered a public school education in my youth I'll confess I'm lucky that I don't think Central America is somewhere in Kansas and that the Renaissance didn't involve the knights of Camelot to some degree. My point is why the fascination on this side of the pond with the failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605?
My first inclination was that most of these folks just dug V for Vendetta, mainly the movie and I'm sure a few the comic book (or 'graphic novel' if you prefer). The film did come out during the recent (and chillingly Orwellian) Bush administration and seemed to tap into the right zeitgeist as our nation slowly emerged from our collective post 9/11 friendly facism funk. But fun as the movie was and though inspiring a legion of Guy Fawkes masked activists, it just didn't seem to be a satisfactory answer for me, if even only on an intuitive level.
That's when I had the idea that we should do something similar in our own country. Indulge in a sort of cross between the Burning Man Festival and July 4th. Maybe we could all start burning effigies of Benedict Arnold come Independence Day. Perhaps it's time we celebrated Lysander Spooner or Leon Czolgosz Day in a nationalistic orgy of open flames and mock revolution. Of course you'd need a really good rhyme scheme to seal the deal... and I don't even know how to pronounce Czolgosz much less work the name into a couple of quick stanzas.
Oh well, just a thought really.
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