Up front: if you don't wanna hear me ramble about the state of the U.S. and just want cool firework photos, I get it; scroll down!

This is not meant as a dig at anyone who wants to be happy about the 4th of July OR a milestone like 250 years, but as a person of mixed chicano descent who has gone a whole life plagued by being told I'm somehow "less" than my white counterparts (when my mom's family had been in California before the Spaniards came to ruin everything) I'm one of those (apparently dangerous) people who didn't have a "The U.S. was great before Trump ruined it!!" mindset.

I think it's important to be critical of the things that matter like the country I was born in, and that country does not get "better" by ignoring its problems, or "voting out the bad ones and voting in the good ones" when "the good ones" still do imperialism, still do racial and identity inequality, still do rampant capitalism, still uphold evangelical hegemony, etc etc etc. I mean, shit; obviously I'm never gonna support a GOP candidate but right now elected officials doing radical things like [checks notes] "helping people afford childcare" are being painted by the supposed "good guys" the Democrats as the fucking second coming of Stalin and like, what do you even do with that?

And shit, to be clear, I'm not an "I'll never be satisfied" person. That said, I think we've not hit the "bare minimum" on a national scale, but the more we see vast swaths of the populace willing to celebrate people being violently rounded up by an unrestricted militarized police force and trans folks get their rights stripped away at the Supreme Court level, the more it feels like "bare minimum" might be a goddamn pipe dream. We hit 'failed state' status well before Trump. Hell, the audacity of 'electing the black man' broke the minds of white people to the point where they started cosplaying the 1700's and vilifying the concept of healthcare that doesn't bankrupt you. Again I say, what do you even do with that?

A nearby town did an official fireworks display on July 2nd that we could see from our place and I'll post those further down, but on July 4th proper nearly everyone in our area went fucking hog wild with the splodeys. Being on a hill means we saw most of it; I got some photos, some gifs, and fuck it, let's kick things off with a camera focus adventure slider because I'm me:

/* image for the RIGHT of the slider*/ /* image for the LEFT of the slider */

Then like, a gif, right? We need a gif?

Pretty much right after this gif was shot, the weather decided it was done with our bullshit and the "Heat wave ends at 9pm when extreme thunder storm hits" alerts turned out were not fucking lying. It started not only downpouring, but also (I timed them!) unleashing an average of 45 lightning strikes per minute for almost an hour. It was sick as hell lmao

As it got darker I tried taking a video and that fucking paid off; the video itself isn't great but this single frame that I pulled out killed me:

I wish I'd caught it as a photo proper but I was having tripod (read; the cat mansion I was using to steady aim the camera out the window) issues, and I'm happy I got it at all.

Anyway, here's some fireworks from the "official" display the closest participating town did on the 2nd that were easier to capture:

Dig it.

As always, thanks for hanging out. Here's your end-of-post cat. Her name is Skitters and she is quite high strung. She did not appreciate the fireworks as much as I did but she DID enjoy the treat bribery.