How I Feel – July 4, 2025

On July 4th, the United States of America will turn 249 years old. But I’ve got to admit, I’m not feeling especially patriotic or celebratory about it this year. I sincerely wonder IF America, as history has known it, will survive to reach 250 years old. On this July 4th, I feel shame, embarrassment, anger, and despair for America.

Why do I feel this way?

Our President is the most despicably corrupt person to ever hold the office. He leads a cult of sycophants who have demonstrated how quickly they will abandon the idea of America in order to gain personal power and enrichment, while reveling in their ugliest selves. 

Our Congress is chock full of said sycophants, tasked with being a check on the executive branch, they are instead eagerly casting aside their Constitutional role as an equal branch of government to instead crown an American king.

Our Supreme Court, whose majority was secured by Sen. McConnell’s completely hypocritical destruction of the Senate’s role for ‘advise and consent’, giving us an illegitimate and corrupt court majority. One that takes vacations on the tab of billionaires and rules that felonious Presidents are actually above the law.

The collective actions of all of the above now have led to where we are today, with masked men snatching people off of the streets of America, sending them to unknown fates in dictatorial countries that are happy to accept American dollars to disappear them. How long will it be until that ‘huddled masses’ plaque is stripped from the Statue of Liberty? America today celebrates hate and cruelty.

Shelves of books have and will continue to be written that document the flood of corruption and destruction of American ideals that this president has wrought. This humble post doesn’t have any hope of competing with all of them for thoroughness. But still…

Among Trump’s first acts in his 2nd term was to pardon more than 1,500 members of the violent mob that he unleashed on our government, and on the police officers working to protect the US Capitol and the peaceful transfer of power.

He has betrayed our allies, embraced our enemies, and upended the global economy and any normalcy in the conduct of diplomacy and international relations to service the whims of our petulant bully child President.

He has gleefully gutted agencies and fired dedicated public servants who worked to save lives globally and here in America. Turning an adjective (woke) that means aware, empathetic, concerned into a pejorative, they celebrate their own hate, racism, and cruelty.

His cult denies science, knowledge, and expertise, and they lie with the same ease and frequency that most of us blink. Upending decades of progress in healthcare and climate science through the spread of disinformation and the placement of quacks and exploiters at the head of agencies that were created to protect our health, our environment, our natural resources, and our very futures. Many Americans have and will continue to die preventable deaths, and many many more human beings on this planet will as a direct result.

And yesterday, his cruel cultists in Congress pass their stupidly named ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ which will benefit the wealthiest Americans, while cutting healthcare and other critical support for those who need it most.

Fuck that. Fuck all if it. I believe in America, and THIS isn’t it.

My own birthday lands just more than a week after the 4th. As a kid, my brothers joked that I was due to be born on the 4th, but I was a ‘dud’ firework that didn’t go off. I remember America’s 200th birthday, the bicentennial, the year I turned 11. My school participated in the celebration of my hometown’s new main library branch in Huntington Beach’s Central Park.

Recently the voters of Huntington Beach defeated the efforts of our MAGA City Council to either privatize or impose restrictions on access to books in our library, a small ray of hope in a community that has built a reputation for aligning with Trump’s cult.

As I turn 60, I can proudly reflect on my career in politics and advocacy in support of ‘woke’ causes, like giving a shit about the environment, and trying to leave a better world in which my children and grandchildren can prosper.

And in 2026, America will celebrate a bigger milestone with a tongue twister of a name, our Semiquincentennial, 250 years old. Right now I still feel like that will be a moment of cautious celebration at best, as it will land four months before our most important chance to right the ship. Because if the November 2026 elections are anything less than a massive defeat for the Congressional sycophants who chose to join a cult in pursuit of power, rather than to be true representatives looking out for ALL Americans, then I think we are truly and permanently fucked as a nation.

I’ll do what I can to help prevent that. And I must maintain the hope and belief that enough of my fellow Americans feel the same, and that our country’s 250th birthday celebration will mark a turning point year in which our country broke this current spell and began a course of recovery of American values and ideals that deserve to reach 251 years and beyond.