We don’t expect politics to be so damned ironic, do we? There was Nixon hosting a visibly impaired Elvis Presley at the White House to prop up his War On Drugs campaign, of course, or George W. Bush, servant of the oil industry, obfuscating the science of climate change, or Bill Clinton, who denied knowing “that woman,” despite the semen stains on Monica Lewinsky’s navy blue dress and what DNA testing would have to say about their provenance, but there’s never been anything even remotely like this in the 250 years since America declared its independence from England. What I’m talking about here is America’s semiquincentennial celebration being presided over by the very man who has switched out our democracy for a dictatorship, in which he rules by fiat. We might as well fly Putin over to wave the flag for us.
Sadly, tragically, on this Fourth of July, 2026, at a time when the Constitution has been rendered moot by Trump and his cadre of loyalists, there is precious little to celebrate. The Supreme Court, overbalanced with right-wing ideologues, has given the president absolute immunity to commit any crimes he chooses during his term, which include far too many even to skim the surface of here. He manipulates the stock market on the fleeting suggestion of a tweet. He forces us to finance I.C.E., his own private police force, not to mention his construction projects, like the new and glorious White House Ballroom. He makes war as he alone sees fit, ignoring the legal requirement of having Congress pass on all such foreign hostilities, even as he angles for the Nobel Peace Prize. He ended the Iran War, didn’t he? Never mind that he alone initiated it, that it expended hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars, depleted our missile reserves, cost untold billions in damage and took the lives of thousands, the only fact that matters is that he negotiated—is negotiating—a peace treaty. Never mind that the terms are no better than those Obama signed off on—our Man Of Peace has terminated the conflict. Or so he says, as of this writing, on this national holiday to celebrate the foundation of what once was our democracy.
Here are the words of John Adams, one of our founding fathers and the second president of the United States: “Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.” Our president, election denier, had no problem with the legitimacy of the 2024 national election in which he was declared the victor, and here he is, bestriding the narrow world like a colossus (see Shakespeare, “Julius Caesar”) to loom over our Independence Day celebrations, and, of course, in the process, taking full credit for everything that was once great about this country. National suicide? He has the knife to our collective throats.
On June 14, a national holiday here (Flag Day), which just happens to coincide with his birthday, he staged an extravaganza at the White House (the portion of it still standing, that is) in honor not of America, but of his own great and glorious self. Can we imagine that the semiquincentennial will be any different? The Fourth of July. Hot dogs, baseball, parades, Coca Cola, beer, fireworks, good cheer and hope for the future, a time to kick loose and celebrate our communal history in all its unfolding glory . . . but not this time, not this year. Nobody I know is in the mood for celebrating anything.
Three cheers, hip-hip, hooray!