The Life in My Years

The Fourth of July.

Its formal name is Independence Day, and with apologies to all the Christians out there, it should be the most revered of American holidays; more revered than Christmas and Easter. Take it from an agnostic.

Traditions keep us grounded and I followed one every Independence Day. Before dawn, I would, with a genuine sense of reverence, hang the American flag over the garage door. It may have been a meaningless gesture the other 364 days, but on Independence Day it really meant something.

Year after year it was the same morning drill; get up, hang the flag, go for a run with the dog, make sure the pool was clean for the kids and grandkids, wonder how many hot dogs Joey Chestnut would consume in that nonsense at Coney Island, get the barbecue fire going (properly done ribs require a good six hours), make the mop sauce, put on the ribs – enjoy the day.

Every

damn

year.

How could life be worse? Family, dogs (hot and four legged), splashing in the pool, good music and unhealthy food on the patio. The American fucking way.

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That all started to change in 2016, when a pretender took up occupancy in the White House. During that first term I somehow managed to put Donald Trump and the cult of MAGA out of my head and convince myself that it was all a fluke. It was just a four-year phase that the country would outgrow. The nation was having its red Corvette, young blonde in the passenger seat, midlife crisis.

COVID notwithstanding, Independence Day 2021 was a brighter one. We’d (sort of) survived January 6th, and Trump was (hopefully) in self-exile. But still something was off. Four years of Donald Trump had thrown the American universe out of kilter.

Eleven months later Dobbs came down and my decision to put out the flag came much harder. I did it. It was my act of defiance. I wrote a piece that year, titled Independence Day 2022: It’s My Damn Flag. I wasn’t about to let the Christian nationalists, the racists, the misogynists and all the other “ists” take possession of my flag, and that of Americans who still believed in two centuries of America’s principles.

The self-exile turned out to be a short one. Donald Trump managed to linger like the locusts. In 1924, Hitler was released from prison, began his rise, was revered by a cult and recognized by a servile nation. By 2023, Donald Trump was well out of self-exile, running for president, revered by a cult, and recognized by a servile party in fear. Still, I hung in there and hung the flag. Walked the dog, put on the ribs, cleaned the pool and enjoyed the day.

2024. Joe Biden and the Democratic Party were a rusting old bucket of a sinking ship. I can’t remember whether I hung the flag or not.

And we’d filled in the swimming pool.

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It’s July Fourth, 2025. To call it Independence Day wouldn’t be just hypocritical, it would be preposterous sham.

In 2022, I wrote,

“Over the years, and thanks to the dubious miracle of social media, I’ve learned that many, if not most Americans don’t know the difference between The Declaration of Independence and The Constitution, often incorrectly placing The Declaration’s clause about “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” somewhere in their own mind’s version of The Constitution. It wouldn’t stun me to know that there are some of my fellow citizens who think that The Federalist Papers are a brand of rolling papers put out by Zig-Zag. None of this is a good thing.

That so many Americans are ignorant of our national documents and rely on TV talking heads or internet hacks for their often-fractured understanding of civics is one of the reasons that we find our democracy on life support.

Ignorance isn’t bliss, it’s damned dangerous.”

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Three years ago, I was concerned that Americans couldn’t differentiate between the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

Two years after that, on Independence Day, 2024 the two men running for president were shaming the sacrifice and legacy of George Washington, a flawed man who still knew when it was time to step aside. On Independence Day 2024, the two candidates for president were putting their pride and their ambitions before country – and their respective parties were tagging along for the ride.

One of those men, the sitting president was beyond his effective years, his abilities having abandoned him. Nobody would have faulted him for not declaring himself for reelection. Had he done the right, the courageous and the honorable thing, he might have garnered the same accolades as Washington. But instead, he let himself be guided by pride; denigrating all of the younger, skilled and well qualified potential candidates in his party by insisting that he was the only one who could beat Donald Trump. By Independence Day, after having suffered a debate meltdown, the president was waffling and his party was in more disarray than it usually is.

And the other man? The shameful, corrupt story is still being written.  

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Three years ago I was bothered by the notion that Americans had a muddled knowledge of the history, the documents, and the traditions of their own homeland.  

How fucking quaint was that?

Forget about those documents praising democracy. Most Americans don’t really care about democracy at all – period. Too boring and too abstract. Too much philosophy, not enough cheap eggs. They made it all too clear on November 5, 2024.

Too extreme? Too critical?

The numbers don’t lie (even if the man who was elected does). More people either voted for the man who would be autocrat, or just didn’t vote (for various and naive reasons), rather than to cast a ballot for the woman who would have honored the two documents that Americans don’t seem to really care about.

And on July Fourth, 2025, people will wear T-shirts with quotes from the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and yet so many of them still will maintain their silence in the face of rising injustices and a burgeoning autocracy. Too busy. Doesn’t affect them yet.

On July Fourth, 2025, the orange guy in the White House will talk a game (and it won’t be a good game), about the “greatness” of America and his reverence for the flag that, at rallies, he hugs in sham patriotism. My guess is Trump won’t mention either the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution as he likely doesn’t know their stories and he’s treated both documents as so much inconvenient trash.

Whatever gibberish Trump spews on this fourth, his sycophants in Congress and the imbeciles in his cabinet and the neo-Nazis who advise him, and the cult that adores him will all cluck along in agreement. And he will, as he does on any holiday, insult anyone or any group that deigns to disagree with him. It’s what kings do.

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How do we have the audacity to call July Fourth, Independence Day? Independence Day commemorates the day when thirteen colonies decided to beat the odds and overthrow a king.

How can this nation celebrate independence from an English king after the White House Instagram account had shared a post showing a faked Time magazine cover, with Donald Trump wearing a crown? In place of the magazine’s title was Trump’s name in big letters —at the left corner, read the words, “Long live the king.”

That’s the same man who said in an interview with Atlantic Magazine, ‘I run the country and the world.’

Independence Day commemorates the beginning of the resistance against a royal despot and yet just days before July Fourth:

Trump mused about arresting Zohran Mamdani the leading candidate for mayor of New York City, because, according to Trump, “We don’t need a communist in this country.” So much for freedom of expression.

Trump threatened to prosecute CNN for reporting about an app that alerts people about impeding ICE activity. So much for a free press.

Trump threatened his recent ally, Elon Musk, with retribution over Musk’s criticism over Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill.’ “No more Rocket launches, Satellites, or Electric Car Production, and our Country would save a FORTUNE,” posted Trump. So much for freedom of speech.

Trump unconstitutionally seized seven billion dollars of Education Department funding for after-school and summer programs, English learners, teacher training, and other school functions. Money appropriated by Congress which Trump has no right to seize. So much for the separation of powers and congressional power of the purse.

Trump and fellow fascists Kristi Noem and Ron DeSantis went on camera to yuck it up over a gulag in the middle a steaming alligator infested swamp built to house immigration detainees (aka kidnap victims). It was a jovial laugh fest as Trump expressed his hopes that there would be similar concentration camps in “many states.” So much for the Eighth Amendment.

As of this writing, Trump’s so called “big, beautiful bill” has passed through Congress. It’s a celebration for the few, the ultra-wealthy, paid for by the suffering of the many. It will go down in history as a cruel monstrosity promoted by a knave and rubber stamped by cowards; a feckless gang of individuals who knew in that empty place where their hearts should reside that the bill was a an abomination against decency, compassion, and the general notion that taking care of the least of our brothers and sisters is what government should be about. But the king had set a deadline and in the end, right or wrong, Congress lacked the gumption to do the right thing.

And the ugly irony of it all is that the self-proclaimed American king will sign it on the day that the nation should be honoring the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. Makes me want to vomit my holiday barbecue.

And that, my fellow Americans, is July Fourth, 2025. Don’t dare to call in Independence Day. Because two and a half centuries later, we’re once again struggling for independence.

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As for myself on this fourth?

I’m saddened that I’m not saddened. Sadness has abandoned me. I’m disappointed and disgusted. But most of all I’m angry.

Wait.

I take that back.

I’m not just angry.

I’m motherfucking angry.

Anger is what fuels me.

And while I haven’t lost hope, I’m still not hopeful.

As ridiculous as it may seem, the flag or no flag decision has been a struggle for me. As flawed as this nation has been since its inception, that flag has long symbolized things that were generally regarded as good and right.

But now, at this tipping point, the nation that the flag represents has set aside the principles that it was founded on and all the good that came since (we no longer send medicine to heal the sick and food to feed the hungry). And while it hasn’t yet become a symbol of evil, it’s on the precipice.

So no, I won’t be putting out the flag this year.

I can’t honor it this year.

But I sure as shit won’t surrender it.

The kids and grandkids aren’t coming for barbeque this year. For all of the extended family it’s just a day off.

Maybe I’ll put on a slab of ribs, roast some corn and bake an apple pie for tradition’s sake.

Or fuck it –

maybe we’ll just have Chinese to go.

Let the new fight for independence begin.