"Mourning on the 4th of July."
4 JULY—This day, the 4th of July, ought to be one of deep reflection, a day when every American asks whether or not we as a people have held to the ideals upon which the nation was founded.
Instead, it has become an unthinking, mindless celebration of American greatness by a people who are deeply demoralized and who know, even if they cannot consciously admit it, that America is not great and has not been for a very long time. The parades, fireworks, picnics are all a distraction, a flinch from reality, a thin veneer applied to a bloated rotting empire. It no longer has any genuine meaning and has devolved into a display of bread and circuses.
Is our democracy strong? Are its people thriving? Do our government and public institutions serve the people or do they serve corporate and military interests? Do our regulatory agencies—CDC, EPA, FDA, NIH—still protect us or have they been captured by corporations? Do we have a genuinely free and uncorrupted press? Are any of the rights guaranteed by the constitution, such as freedom of speech, being intentionally eroded? Do our tax dollars go to serving people and communities or are they siphoned off into the military? Is the United States a beacon of hope that other people and nations can look to?
Any honest answer to these question can only leave one in deep mourning.
On July 4, 1776 a courageous, ragtag group of colonists had the guts to declare independence from an authoritarian king. In the intervening years the United States has turned itself into the preeminent tyrannical presence around the globe making George III seem almost benevolent in comparison.
We have military bases, or a military presence, on every continent except in the Antarctic. Our annual military budget exceeds that of the next ten countries combined. Brown University’s Cost of War Project reports that the Russian military budget “amounts to less than 1/10 of the U.S. defense budget.”
According to the Center for Economic and Policy Research, “54 countries from across the world . . . are under some kind of economic sanctions,” imposed by the U.S. In 2020, more than one quarter of the world’s population was living under sanctions, a number that has only increased since then. As the CEPR report noted, “economic sanctions harm people in target countries, including by contributing to increases in mortality, poverty, and inequality, and to declines in per capita income and human rights.”
Sanctions are intended to undermine sovereignty by weakening economies, destabilizing governments, and coercing nations into complying with U.S. diktats. They are the blunt instrument of a bully. American colonists, who revolted against taxation without representation, would be appalled by what their descendants have done to the rest of the world.
America has nothing to celebrate and a lot of soul searching and hard work ahead if its citizens are to redeem the nation and make the 4th of July a day worthy of celebration.
It is obvious that the West in general and the United States in particular, are governed by individuals whose behavior is indistinguishable from that of high-functioning sociopaths.
What do people propose to do about it?
An exchange that is probably apocryphal has Benjamin Franklin telling a woman that, indeed, she has her republic, if she can keep it. Clearly, we have been unable to do so.
I blame the people.
Granted the government is actually the proximate cause but the people are supposed to be in control of the government except, of course, we know that we're not. The real problem is the lawyers most of whom should be required to get a real job. But how, really, did some of our problems come about?
At the turn of the last century, a bunch of women got together and got a constitutional amendment passed outlawing alcohol. That was spectacularly stupid and should have barred women from ever voting. While that's a great aside, that's not my point. The constitution doesn't grant the US government the power to control something like alcohol. Hence the need for a constitutional amendment. Which necessitated another amendment to undo the first. But in the meantime, the evil lawyers had been at work and congress passed the pure food and drug act. Suddenly the US can ban anything, including alcohol. Not in the constitution? No problem! Just write a law and give yourself the authority! Not the process described in the constitution? No problem! Just ignore it.
Another wonderous invention that is subverting our democracy – imaginative interpretations of apparently mundane constitutional clauses. Did you know that the Civil Rights act's constitutional authority is the Interstate Commerce Clause? Somehow, I find that morally repugnant. To make matters worse, the ICC has been the basis for a lot of law since the great depression.
Another thing that subverts our democracy – judicial activism. Back in the '50s some widows sued the government when their civilian husbands were killed in an aircraft accident in a B-29. They alleged that this document laid everything out and they wanted to enter it into the case. The government claimed it was classified and putting it in the case would compromise national security. The SC created the national security exception to the 6th amendment to the constitution. If the government declares national security, they no longer have to prove their case, they just win. It wouldn't be too bad if instead of proving their case they essentially agreed to lose. To make matters worse, when the document was finally declassified a few years back, it was discovered that (a) it said what the widows said it said, and (b) the paragraph they were interested in was unclassified.
And that's for openers.