Today is the Fourth of July, our second in the Trump era, and it’s worth taking a look at what that means.
The Fourth is the day we celebrate both our first Continental Congress’s unanimous approval of the resolution for independence from Great Britain and their approval of the Declaration of Independence two days later on July 4, 1776.
The architects who built our nation put lifetimes worth of effort, planning, and design into the framework we all now live within, and it’s a good thing they did.
In the age of the would-be dictator presently occupying the White House, we find the United States Constitution, the blueprint provided to us by our founders for the maintenance of that system, under assault at every turn.
It’s not all barbecues and fireworks out there today. There’s a lot of people who aren’t feeling independent at all, and there are others who’ve been stripped of their independence by a United States government that has grown cold and callous and stupid under the reign of Donald Trump.
It’s worse than we thought it would be, or at least just as bad. Charlottesville and the death of Heather Heyer hadn’t happened yet by this time last year, the Supreme Court hadn’t allowed itself to be corrupted by enforcing Trump’s stupid travel ban, and above all, there were not thousands of children locked in cages on our southern border.
That last has thrown our country into turmoil without precedent. We get some reminder every day. Earlier today, for example, a woman in New York City was arrested for attempting to scale the Statue of Liberty on a free-climb.durning the anti-ICE protests.
Do not ever underestimate the lengths to which people will go for freedom. Whether it’s our own or someone else, it doesn’t matter. Freedom is freedom. That means either everybody has it, or that no one really does.