Happy 249th Birthday, America!
America celebrates its 249th birthday today. Will it make it to its 250th, and what will it be like?
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Friday, July 4, 2025
Quote of the Day:
Willing Powel: "Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?”
Benjamin Franklin: “A republic, if you can keep it.”
Powl: “And why not keep it?”
Franklin: “Because … the people.”
Happy 249th Birthday, America!
If you get bitten by a rattlesnake, ,you’ll know it right away: excruciating pain at the wound site, immediate swelling and discoloration, and numbness of the affected limb. But that isn’t what kills you. The toxins in rattlesnake venom quickly spread through your body, causing dizziness, nausea and vomiting, blurred vision and difficulty breathing. If those symptoms aren’t promptly treated, you can die. Or you might survive, but suffer strokes, endure the loss of an arm or leg, or other long-term health effects.
The United States is in the fourth month of the most toxic rattlesnake bite it has ever received. It is appropriate to wonder whether we will celebrate our 250th birthday, and how.
1. A Year Ago Today
A year ago, I wrote this:
Humility and a decent respect for the lessons of history require us also to recognize that the survival of the American Experiment is by no means guaranteed. American Exceptionalism, Manifest Destiny, and Jingoism notwithstanding, there are no guarantees our country will survive, or that the democracy we fashioned out of a New World will continue.
Of course, this nation has faced terrible challenges before. The Civil War, the Army-McCarthy hearings, and the ubiquity of the Kardashians come to mind.
But many of us – most of us, I reckon – view this fall’s presidential election as a nenacing inflection point on the way to ruin. And on both sides. Partisans for Trump have convinced themselves Joe Biden is an existential threat to the country… On the other side, millions see Donald Trump as an existential threat to democracy.
As I re-read these words, I am saddened by my naivete.
2. Imagine the Worst
I saw the warning signs flashing red. I devoured The Bulwark and Ruth Ben-Ghiat and Timothy Snyder. I even read the Federalist Papers, especially No. 47, with its insistence that the separation of powers and system of checks and balances were the only way to prevent tyranny.
The Declaration of Independence and Revolutionary War rid the new American people of a king, and of their teste for kings. But the writers of the Constitution still feared the peoples’ impulse to raise up a leader, to slough their problems onto someone else’s shoulders, to duck responsibility and docilely go along with a new master.
So when I wrote those words last summer, I understood their danger mentally. But I balanced those risks against the innate goodness of the American people. Deep in my heart, I believed they would turn away from a second Trump term after the chaos and viciousness of the first. And I believed that, should Trump be re-elected, the people would close ranks behind the institutions and mores that had made us great, limiting the damage done in a second administration.
I underestimated Trumpism’s boldness and overestimated the ability – the will – of our institutions to contain him.
3. It’s Worse Than We Imagined
And so, as of today Donald Trump has neutered the legislative branch and corrupted the judiciary. The Senate failed in its duty to advise and consent, giving us the most incompetent and corrupt Cabinet ever. The Congress is nothing but a footstool, and Trump is openly contemptuous of their prerogatives. The lower courts stand up to the most unconstitutional actions, only to have the Supreme Court routinely surrender its constitutional independence and legitimacy in service to the Orange Mad King.
And, by and large, the American people shrug their shoulders and accede to the latest outrage. They still hope the price of eggs will come down (they won’t) and the trans athletes will be banned from competition (both of them).
Just as an example: The President of the United States again suggested this week that he wants to deport U.S. citizens:
They're not new to our country. They're old to our country. Many of them were born in our country. I think we ought to get them the hell out of here, too, if you want to know the truth. So maybe that will be the next job.
When challenged about this patently illegal idea, he says he’s only referring to violent criminals. But remember that 70% of the people rounded up in recent ICE raids have no criminal record.
And remember, at some level he’s not talking about immigrant Mexicans who have been working as house painters for 30 years. He’s talking about Liz Cheney. And L.A. Mayor Karen Bass. And you.
Why isn’t there rioting in the streets over this?
Highway 39 winds northwest from Kerrville, following the Guadalupe River up to Hunt and westward until it meets Highway 87. Cypress trees and vacation homes line the winding course of the river, and numerous summer camps provide lifetimes of memories along its course. It is one of the most lovely drives in Texas.
In the last few days, torrential rains in the watershed turned the upper Guadalupe into a raging monster, leaving a trail of destruction and, tragically, death before it.
As of this morning, there are 24 confirmed deaths. Horrifically, 23 campers from Camp Mystic, set in a graceful, mountainous curve of the river, are missing.
Please keep these people in your thoughts and prayers, whatever form they take. And, if you want to help, check here.
My level of confidence for this union sustaining itself diminishes almost daily. I think the integrity of our electoral system has been technologically and financially corrupted to the point where the will of the voters has become only a sideshow. Perhaps, this is all karma, and our founding rhetoric about equality, which has, fundamentally, never really existed, has come back to haunt us with our own hypocrisy. Maybe we never were what we claimed to be. Maybe the universe has grown weary of the lip service we offer up with regards to democracy and equality. Maybe everything is just a rich man's trick, and they now have enough power to rub it in our faces and tell us there's not a damn thing we can do about their plundering of what is left of America.
Will we make it to America's 250th? Yes. Will we be celebrating? No.