We’re watching JAG, an old Navy lawyer drama from the post-Top Gun era. I’ve heard “on my six,” about a zillion times already, along with “camel jockeys,” “squatters,” “burst her cherry,” and several references to “ice.” A little slut shaming, a little girl-on-girl voyeurism, and a supersize order of male bravado…it’s a real time capsule, this show.

Times have changed so much since this show debuted. It was a huge hit, running for several years and spawning all the NCIS shows.

I keep thinking about the pathos that inspired and uplifted a show like this—Boomers of the same mindset who support conservative politics today. At the time this television show was at its peak, you could avoid this kind of rhetoric by changing the channel or picking up a book.

As a writer, I deeply understand the satisfaction of creating ugly characters who say all the wrong things. They are a receptacle for all the stress, anxiety, and anger you need to release. They’re easy to demonize and a joy to kill off.

We don’t have fictitious television shows as that kind of outlet anymore. We don’t demand the head of the murdering bastard at the end of the program before a commercial break transitions us to a nightcap of late night comedy.

The same economics that blew our world economy into the widest gulf between the haves and the have-nots obviously apply to television programming. We go hard for unscripted, cheap, and disposable entertainment. The only consequence for ungallant, unkind, downright shitty behavior is higher ratings. Bad behavior = success.

We now pour our pain, suffering, and angst into the bullying of the kind, the educated, and the rational. Name any television show from the past 40 years, and chances are good that the most notable character from it is the villain. The one who steals, lies, cheats, rapes, kills…

Culturally, our focus has shifted from our eyes on all that’s good and holy to all that shocks and demeans. When I say “our” focus, of course, I mean as a culture. There are still millions of Americans who don’t tune into garbage mindset, but they are woefully outnumbered by the masses cheering on the criminal contingent of popularized competitions.

This July 4, I am saddened that the bad guys have emerged as our cultural heroes. If you can shock, offend, bully, and abuse, you are “winning.” Our nation has changed, worsening in character by our celebration of our human faults.

I wish we were focused on decency. On kindness. Generosity. Freedom.

I want to believe we are better than this. I want to believe the bad guys can’t win. I want the voices that expel the garbage of their souls to be fictional villains, not bona fide presidential candidates and their bankrolling political action committees and think tanks.

Our heritage is one of freedom, opportunity, and community. Please share with your friends and family your thoughts, questions, and lived experience today. Please listen when they share their own. The only way we’re ever going to turn the tide of ugliness in this country is by working together. Not to censor, but to reason.

“Prudence, indeed, will dictate, that governments long established, should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.”

Thomas Jefferson wrote that. He was referring to our nation’s origins as a property of the crown, but I find his truths to be self-evident regarding today’s system of socioeconomic injustice, as well.

Perhaps today of all days is the time to re-read (or REALLY study in earnest) the following:

THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

In Congress, July 4, 1776

THE UNANIMOUS DECLARATION

of the

THIRTEEN UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.–That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate, that governments long established, should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these States. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operations till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them, and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the State remaining, in the meantime, exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavored to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.

He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.

He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies, without the consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to the civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing taxes on us without our consent:

For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:

For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries, so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments:

For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection, and waging war against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is, at this time, transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy, scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow-citizens, taken captive on the high seas, to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions.

In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have we been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them, from time to time, of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They, too, have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved; and that as free and independent States, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent States may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honour.

JOHN HANCOCK.New Hampshire,

Josiah Bartlett,
Wm. Whipple,
Matthew Thornton; Massachusetts Bay,

Saml. Adams,
John Adams,
Robt. Treat Pain,
Elbridge Gerry;Rhode Island, etc.,

Step. Hopkins 
William Ellery;Delaware,

Caesar Rodney, 
Geo. Read,
Tho. M’Kean;Connecticut,

Roger Sherman,
Saml. Huntington, 
Wm. Williams,
Oliver Wolcott;Maryland,

Samuel Chase,
Wm. Paca, 
Thos. Stone,
Charles Carroll,of Carrolton;New York,

Wm. Floyd, 
Phil Livingston,
Frans. Lewis, 
Lewis Morris;Virginia,

George Wythe,
Richard Henry Lee,
Thos. Jefferson,
Benja. Harrison,
Thos. Nelson, jr., 
Francis Lighfoot Lee, 
Carter Braxton;New Jersey,

Richd. Stockton,
Jno. Witherspoon,
Fras. Hopkinson, 
John Hart, 
Abra. Clark;North Carolina, 

Wm. Hooper,
Joseph Hewes,
John Penn;Pennsylvania,

Robt. Morris,
Benjamin Rush,
Benja. Franklin,
John Morton, 
Geo. Clymer,
Jas. Smith, 
Geo. Taylor,
James Wilson, 
Geo. Ross; South Carolina, 

Edward Rutledge,
Thos. Heyward, junr.,
Thomas Lynch, junr.,
Arthur Middleton;Georgia, 

Button Gwinnett,
Lyman Hall,
Geo. Walton.

IN CONGRESS,

January 18, 1777.

Ordered,

That an authenticated copy of the Declaration of Independence, with the names of the Members of Congress subscribing the same, be sent to each of the United States, and that they be desired to have the same put on record.

JOHN HANCOCK,
President.

By Order of Congress,
Attest, CHAS. THOMSON, Secy.

A true copy,
JOHN HANCOCK,Presidt.