Patriot Games

How I Learned to Start Worrying and Hate the Bombs Bursting in Air

Ziggy stands about an inch too far for my hand to reach him from where I sit. His hind legs are trembling, and he is staring into space—not at me or even in the direction of the scary boom outside. I call him. I shift positions so I can touch him, but he does not move, not even to give me a side-eye.

If it’s a one-off, he will lie down eventually and try to sleep. But if it happens again—the thunder, the gunshots, the fireworks—he will start panting and pace from room to room. I can hold him as tightly as a Thunder Shirt or a weighted blanket, but it does not comfort him, and he tires of my doting.

When I had anxiety, a lengthy hug or someone lying on top of me could often stop the quaking, but only for as long as I was wrapped in it. Even the perk of being a human capable of reasoning doesn’t stop panic attacks once they’ve started.

My handsome boy turns six on the fourth of July. He hates his birthday.

Ziggy, a 90-pound Great Pyrenees/Anatolian Shepherd mix, has been standing an inch away from me for various times throughout the last four days, thanks to the Blue Angels. I live several miles from downtown, yet the planes have been shaking our house like a Kansas cyclone at random times throughout the day. I was outside when the first jets flew over on Thursday. Six planes flew in an arrow so close to me that I might have been able to see the color of the pilots’ eyes.

Sometimes the spectacle of six planes in a V formation, weaving their red, white, and blue smoke into a jingoistic tapestry against the sky can inspire awe. I have seen them make spirals and loops, fly upside-down and at 90 degrees, nose-diving, flipping, then shooting for the heavens.

Photo by Kelley Ashbrook on Unsplash

I felt some kind of way, as the kids say, when the planes drew red, white, and blue stripes in front of the old Domino Sugar sign at the Inner Harbor as I drove to a friend’s house on Friday. But I am not conflicted. I like them less than I ever have. I suspect it has something to do with these times. When I mentioned online how much I hated it and how much this whole tacky 250 celebration has compounded my dislike, I was instantly schooled by guys about how the Blue Angels have been around forever and they’re amazing and cool and all that.

In case you didn’t know, eighty years ago, Admiral Chester Nimitz conceived of a way to boost the morale of Navy while giving it some fancy PR. It became something of a recruitment tool to draw attention to and interest in the armed forces. The Blue Angels, who took their name from a desegregated nightclub in New York City, now fly Boeing F/A-18 Super Hornets (also called RHINOS). Being a Blue Angel acrobat is one of the deadliest jobs in the world. Ten percent of them have died doing it.

[image: https://www.facebook.com/groups/NoMoreBlueAngels/]

I’m sorry to poo-poo on your patriot parades. But right now, while we are at war with Iran over oil, these airshows are wasting thousands and thousands of gallons of fuel. Last year, Washington State called for an end to the Blue Angels:

Climate impacts of the Blue Angels airshow are also of great concern. Greenhouse gases in our atmosphere are increasing at an unprecedented rate due to human industrial activity. The Navy uses about 70,550 gallons of jet fuel for Seafair, spewing around 670 metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in one weekend. This is the equivalent to the amount of CO2 emitted by over 140 single-family homes for an entire year.

Physicians claim that petroleum-based fuel “makes tiny PM 2.5 particles that fill and cannot escape our lungs. These tiny particles in the lungs make asthma worse and raise the risk of other heart and lung disease and even dementia.”

For me, Blue Angels symbolize our power over other countries, the fear we spread at home and abroad, and war. Every time I hear or see a flyover, I think about the citizens of governments at war—Gazans, Ukrainians, Iranians, Iraqis—who endure this perpetual noise that is followed by bombs, literal end punctuation. Showing off our might makes light of their suffering while we remind our own that this could be us.

Fireworks at the Inner Harbor, 2013, by me

I used to love the hell out of professional fireworks, ooh-ing and ahh-ing with the crowd and slightly disappointed by a too-short finale: the colorful crackle of a Chrysanthemum, the boom of Whistling Moon Fountains, and the sizzle of Showering Fountains. But once the homemade fireworks became legal in Maryland so inconsiderate jackoffs could ruin your sleep and set things ablaze for weeks in July around the corner from your house, traumatizing your pets and your vets and your neighbors with autism, I have come to dread them. They are especially unwelcome as this administration continues to erode our freedoms and dismantle the Constitution.

Nowadays, I prefer the lightning bugs, their quiet golden sparkle that doesn’t celebrate fighter jets, drones, firebombs, or instruments of war.

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