The 4th Couldn't Have Arrived At A Better Time

From my feed and the comments on some of my recent notes, it seems that more than a touch of despair has started to hit the country. I understand why, it’s been a hell of a couple of weeks; a time that I think will go down as the true inflection point for what’s to come.

Trump got his big beautiful bill in what could be seen as the Republicans Striking Back, finally laying waste to many of the Democratic programs built over the last half century to help the neediest among us. The Supreme Court gave the go-ahead to ship people overseas to certain death. A proto concentration camp was erected in Florida, and now 200 marines have been assigned to guard it, making it the second state in less than a month where military assets were deployed inside the country for domestic policing, something that they were never trained for and without updated rules of combat.

So yeah, it seems bad. It is bad. We can just say it. But let’s not fall into despair.

Because that’s what they need us to do. You’re already seeing their signaling on this. Public tours of their detention centers are meant to announce that one day you, too, could find yourself in such a complex if you don’t toe the line.

Regarding Democrats, Trump ranted at a crowd of supporters yesterday, “They hate Trump. But I hate them, too. I really do. I hate them.”

Good. We welcome your hate.

Because it means Trump knows, deep down inside, that we stand in his way to accomplishing all the horrific things that Stephen Miller and Russ Vought are whispering into his demented brain.

But it’s not just Democrats. Not anymore.

People are starting to wake up. The tariffs, the deployment of marines in American cities, the widespread reporting on people getting disappeared (including U.S. citizens), the threat of denaturalizing U.S. citizens, and now the passage of one of the most disliked pieces of legislation ever brought before Congress are finally breaking through beyond the people who follow politics closely that our country isn’t just in bad shape, it’s in danger.

And that’s when big coalitions start to take shape.

I acknowledge that it may seem weird to celebrate the 4th of July this year. After all, it marks when we the people declared ourselves free from the tyranny of a mad king, and here we are, seemingly giving in to a different one.

But when I look at our flag, I don’t see something that was created, I see something that was forged.

We didn’t start with 50 stars. We started with 13. It could have ended there. But on their own, each state decided that this experiment was worth trying. And every added star meant the ideals of our founders spread further and further; a nation of isolated immigrants becoming one.

Each stripe represents a group of people - the OG 13 British colonies - that decided that they needed to take dramatic action to ensure their freedom and the freedom of their ancestors.

Our flag is living history, and we’re just the latest thread being added to its tapestry.

I know that the Republicans and then the MAGAs tried to co-opt the flag to narrowly mean whatever they felt it should mean. That they were the real Americans and the liberal cucks who fund their states weren’t deserving of it.

But I refuse to give that to them. I’ve had ancestors who fought for the Union, who fought in World War 1 and 2. Some earned valiant medals and some perished in the fight. But all of them carried that flag and swore to our founding document. And I won’t let a bunch of anti-democratic zealots who never served a day in their life change that.

So I will celebrate America today. Not to ignore how she’s being assaulted at the moment, but to remind myself of how special this experiment is and to keep standing up and fighting for the values - the real values - that flag represents.