There are many different ways to celebrate the Fourth of July. Most people get together with friends and family. They grill some food outside. They watch fireworks. Maybe you go out on the lake if you have a boat. One way or another, it's all about enjoying the holiday and celebrating whatever it is about the United States that you love most. It's different for everybody. It's very different for Arnold Schwarzenegger and Mark Zuckerberg. One of them wrote about how the life he's had could not have happened anyplace else. The other did...something very different.
One of the great things about America is that so many people come here looking for a new future, and lots of them are able to find the success they dream of. One person who absolutely made good is Arnold Schwarzenegger. The actor and former of Governor of California celebrated the holiday with a picture of himself in his native Austria, showing the place where his journey to the U.S. truly began. He wrote about how the dreams he had could only have come true here.
Arnold Schwarzenegger says he'll always be grateful for the United States and that's just the sort of story that is worth celebrating on the nation's birthday. Arnold Schwarzenegger likely inspired many others who dreamed of making a new life in America. While not everybody finds a level of success here quite on par with what Arnold Schwarzenegger has done, there were likely many similar stories being told around the grill yesterday.
Of course, not everybody celebrates the Fourth of July quite the same way, and I'm not sure anybody celebrates Independence Day quite like the CEO of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg. He also posted something to Instagram to celebrate the holiday. However, in his case what we got was Zuckerberg surfing with an American flag to the strains to John Denver music. It's...odd.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Mark Zuckerberg is getting roasted pretty hard for this. At the same time, I'm wondering if that was maybe the point? It's a little hard to believe that Zuckerberg wasn't fully aware of what he was doing when he posted a video over a minute long with him surfing with an American flag as "Country Roads" plays over the whole thing. One could not invent a more perfect meme, unless that was exactly what was being attempted here. Or perhaps I'm giving him too much credit and he really thought this was going to look super cool, and a lot of people simply do not agree.
Whichever of these is your personal favorite way to celebrate America's birthday, a heart warming immigrant story, or, not. I'm guessing most people will find significant enjoyment out of one of these. Or possibly both, but for very different reasons.
