July 4, 2025: Proud to be an American?
An American flag decorated a neighbor’s front lawn this recent Memorial Day weekend. It was attached to another flag that said, “Proud to be an American!”
I wondered. “Which America is he proud of? Who we were? Who we are? Or who we are becoming?” Do these nuances make a difference to him? Or is he soothed by some generic good feeling separated from context?
I wrestle with this.
Right now, I am ashamed, ashamed and disgusted by how quickly America has been rolled by a gross, demented crook and his band of fascists, cowards, and predatory opportunists.
America is under siege by a well-organized cabal of right-wing zealots dismantling America’s 249-year system of government -- the one we profess to revere and celebrate on July 4th.
I was born less than three months after Pearl Harbor was attacked and the U.S. entered WWII against Japan and Germany. Four uncles fought in the Army (2), Army Air Force, and the Navy. My brother joined the Army when he was seventeen; I joined the Marines when I was eighteen. We didn’t wait to be drafted.
As a child, I enjoyed G.I. Joe comic books where brave cartoon American soldiers defeated fiercely demonized “Huns,” “krauts,” “nips,” and “Japs.” John Wayne’s Sergeant Striker, in The Sands of Iwo Jima, was the prototype of the heroic American. He represented a country whose people loved democracy, crushed tyranny, and helped our allies defeat, and recover from, fascist oppression. We were a proud, prosperous nation with a robust middle class. We were a nation, on the cusp of dealing with our simmering problems with racial and sexual discrimination.
Unfortunately, by 1964, the U.S. (as we learned from Robert McNamara in the Fog of War and from the Pentagon Papers) was betrayed when President Johnson lied about an incident in the Gulf of Tonkin and tragically took ownership of the Vietnam War. By 1975, 58,200 Americans and untold millions of Vietnamese had been killed. For a lie.
Like many, I thought that after the Vietnam debacle, America’s politicians would have learned a lesson and would never again send our men and women into combat based on a lie. Then, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld used 9/11 as a pretext to bamboozle George W. Bush with lies about “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq. And we were at it again -- this time igniting a series of powder kegs in the Middle East, powder kegs that are still exploding.
Compounding this lie, a tone-deaf Bush joked in a published video about not being able to find those “pesky” WMD, while he crept around his Oval Office. For laughs. Sadly, the joke was on the men and women who were deployed based on this lie, especially those who paid the ultimate price:
Our American dead — US Military: 6,951 deaths (4,550 in Iraq, 2,401 in Afghanistan). US Contractors: 7,820 deaths (3,793 in Iraq, 3,937 in Afghanistan, 90 in Pakistan.
For those more disturbed by deficit spending than body counts, the Bush administration checked that box as well. To support his wars, Bush squandered Bill Clinton’s balanced budget, which provided the piggy bank for “W’s” protracted wars. After that, back to deficits and Bush’s 2007 financial crisis.
Despite these catastrophic events, I never felt the country was systemically corrupt, though many of its politicians were. I believed even the weakest presidents cared deeply about the Constitution and the rule of law, though they might occasionally have attempted to bend it in their favor.
But corruption became systemic with the Supreme Court’s 2010 “Citizens United” decision. When unregulated cash in elections gave billionaires and corporations overwhelming advantages over the average citizen, the game changed. America’s current systemic corruption, especially in the person of Donald Trump, would not have been possible without Citizens United. Place unlimited funds in the hands of a criminal and a pathological liar, and you have a recipe for systemic corruption.
And now, America’s most notorious draft dodger, spurred on by FOX chest thumpers like Jesse Watters, has ignored intelligence from his own DNI and bombed Iran’s nucear sites — without a clue about what comes next.
So, am I proud to be an American? Some explanation.
Though I have often been a dissenter, I am proud of my pre-2010 America. That America, despite its flaws, subscribed to laws and democratic principles. That America valued truth, and it knew the difference between right and wrong. I do not believe that this Trumpian version of America is an America we should celebrate on July 4th -- the 249th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence? I worry it may be a valediction.
This is a time for all Americans to read or re-read the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, then explain to themselves how our country has not betrayed its core values during the first four months of Trump’s America:
It has turned its back on, and even threatened, its friends and allies.
It curries favor with murderous tyrants.
It has masked government storm troopers snatching innocent citizens off the streets and sending them to faraway prisons without due process.
It has thrown the global economy into chaos with its bi-polar tariff announcements.
It has illegally fired thousands of government officials for doing their job.
It has flagrantly defied the law, while ridiculing and threatening Judges, even placing their lives in danger.
It operates a retribution government, harassing and threatening to jail, political opponents, while freeing thousands of convicted criminals.
It brazenly operates a White House shakedown and extortion syndicate.
It is the process of obliterating a free press.
It is using its military against its citizens.
It seeks to hobble the arts, science, and critical thinking itself.
It openly labors to enrich the rich while depriving the poor, the elderly, and the infirm of life’s necessities.
Again, I do not know why my neighbor is in 2025 so proud to be an American. Nostalgia for an earlier time? Or pride in our current reality? Or just mindless oblivion?
I take pride in pre-Trump America. Despite its flaws and mistakes, America was aspirational; it strove to realize its high purpose and rise above the constant demands of human venality.
Right now, I don’t know who the hell we are.
I will not be flying the American flag this July 4th.
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