Once upon a time, on the Fourth of July, a group of wealthy, white, aristocratic enslavers declared their independence from England’s monarchy by creating a foundational document that declared: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Two hundred and fifty years ago, this document birthed the country known as the United States of America.
Unfortunately, those “unalienable Rights” were reserved exclusively for white men, depriving women of the right to vote and eventually declaring Black people to be three-fifths of a human being. The country’s original sins of racism, misogyny, and capitalism were never truly acknowledged or uprooted. Instead, the United States sold itself and the world a romanticized and sanitized story of it being a beacon of freedom—symbolized by the Statue of Liberty holding a torch with one hand, welcoming immigrants and dreamers to her shores, while fending off homegrown rapists trying to lift her skirt and grab her private parts.
Donald Trump was the inevitable result of a country that has spent its existence profiting from slavery, economic exploitation, and a military-industrial complex fed and fattened by forever wars against brown and Black people across the world. He represented the story of America that MAGA wanted erased from history books, museums, and government websites to avoid confronting harsh truths that would inspire reconciliation and reformation.
It’s only fitting that Trump was the criminal vulgarian elected by a plurality of Americans to celebrate the nation’s 250th birthday, which is more akin to a requiem for a country that chose to voluntarily kill itself.
As America staggered and stumbled toward its 250th birthday, the world could only watch in pity, sadness, and horror. The dystopian cinematic comedy Idiocracy could no longer be used as a reference to describe the Trump Administration, because reality had tragically replaced the movie as a warning of what happens when the most incompetent buffoons run—and ruin—the country.
Leading up to the birthday celebration, the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool became home to a blossoming algae overgrowth due to Trump’s decision to ignore science and experts and repaint its base a dark blue. The White House Ellipse remained ruined after a $60 million Ultimate Fighting Championship event that doubled as a Trump grift—and which was attended by billionaires and MAGA reeks who heard a fighter use his victory speech to mock former First Lady Michelle Obama. The East Wing of the White House was still demolished to make room for Trump’s $600 million bunker/ballroom, paid for by U.S. tax dollars and tech “broligarchs.”
The U.S. economy, which had been recovering thanks to former President Joe Biden’s policies, quickly succumbed to Trump’s foolish trade wars, with which he decided to punish our allies and partners because he didn’t understand tariffs and deficits. Instead of securing favorable deals, our allies moved toward China, which emerged as the main beneficiary of the Trump Administration’s numerous self-inflicted wounds.
This included an illegal and unwinnable war against Iran. In response, Iran flexed its muscles by closing the Strait of Hormuz, driving up gas prices and causing food and energy shortages around the world. Instead of fulfilling his promise to lower inflation, Trump’s action single-handedly raised it. Instead of bringing back manufacturing jobs, the Trump Administration invested in AI, a speculative bubble and a misnomer for “artificial intelligence,” that benefited his billionaire donors at the expense of workers and the environment.
As Americans struggled to pay for their health care, Trump and Republicans passed permanent tax cuts for billionaires and paid for it with a trillion-dollar cut to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act marketplaces. Somehow, the country found billions of dollars for war and millions of dollars for Trump’s vanity projects, but it couldn’t find funding for affordable housing, education, childhood cancer research, or the U.S. Agency for International Development—which was dismantled by Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, whose $300 million investment in Trump paid off handsomely. The country did find money, however, to generously fund U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), an agency of masked, lawless thugs that “protected” the country by terrorizing communities and killing U.S. citizens like Renée Good and Ruben Ray Martínez.
After promising to be tough on crime, Trump and his cronies spent their second administration pardoning money launderers, fraudsters, and the criminals who attacked police officers on January 6, 2021. Instead of releasing the Epstein files, the Trump Administration did everything in its power to cover up an international cabal of pedophiles and rapists. The Justice Department conducted no meaningful investigation into the matter and issued no indictments and made no arrests.
However, former Olympic canoe racer David Hearn and a few others were arrested for touching the water and some of the floating debris in the ruined reflecting pool. Peaceful anti-ICE protesters were given prison sentences ranging from thirty to 100 years, while Jeffrey Epstein’s accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell lounged in a minimum-security prison awaiting a possible pardon from Trump. And the country’s top law enforcement agency was instructed to attack Trump’s critics—including journalists, former FBI Director James Comey, and Good’s widow.
Even though the founders of this nation clearly established a separation of powers, Republicans in the House and Senate rubber-stamped nearly every single one of the Trump Administration’s deranged policies and doubled down on anti-immigrant hatred and Islamophobia. The Supreme Court, bought and groomed by rightwing billionaires, abused its power to undo much of the progress made by the Civil Rights Movement, including gutting the Voting Rights Act, as well as overturning Roe v. Wade.
Meanwhile, the fourth estate acted like stenographers for the regime, holding their punches for the sake of access, book deals, and an invitation to the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. And the opposition party directed its fury and passion against its own members who dared to reject corporate PACs, call out Israel’s ongoing genocide, and demand progressive policies that put people above billionaires.
In light of all these horrors, it should be no surprise that the world brought a funeral shroud instead of a cake to acknowledge America’s 250th birthday.