By Ben Olson
Reader Staff
Sometimes, in the wee hours of the morning when sleep won’t come, I’ll let the YouTube algorithms make me a cocktail. In one particular video, I watched a car in a police chase that had lost all four tires after running over spike strips. It was still evading police on its wheel rims. A reporter in the helicopter filming overhead said, “It’s amazing that this driver has been able to keep driving on just rims for the past 20 minutes. There’s nothing left now but metal and sparks. It’s anyone’s guess how much longer he can keep this up before he’s captured.”
I’m not trying to oversimplify things too much, but America is that fleeing vehicle without tires right now. It’s tooling along at about 75 mph on just its rims, throwing sparks in a fiery red, white and blue shower as people watch, either horrified or cheering them on with hot dogs and mustard running down the corners of their mouths. The middle ground doesn’t seem to exist anymore, as long as we remain entertained.
Independence Day is the time of year when patriotic fervor usually reaches a fever pitch. For days before and after the holiday, Americans walk around in flag-festooned shorts and bathing suits, hollering at anyone who will listen about how much they love their country, chastising anyone they think doesn’t love it enough.
For me, the Fourth of July can be a time of contradiction. One of my earliest songs contained the lyric: “We celebrate the birth of our country by buying illegal fireworks from the people we stole it from.” Yeah.
I can already hear the Diesel engines revving up outside my office, readying to belch a load of coal into the air as a form of protest against my lack of cult-eyed devotion toward my country, but I don’t care. Dissidence is not illegal… yet.
I love this country in many ways, but right now, I’m not seeing a whole lot to love about America. We are hurting and tumbling into a morass, but all I hear are the cheers of those who apparently enjoy the downfall.
Just days before the holiday, the Republican Senate narrowly passed President Donald Trump’s amended megabill, formerly known as the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” which is being hailed by sycophantic supporters as the savior of our nation. In reality, this bill will take more away from those who need it and give more to those who don’t, all while adding a proposed $650 billion to the deficit every year. Think of it as a reverse Robin Hood.
Those who will benefit the most are, of course, corporations and the extremely wealthy. The bill would extend Trump’s tax cuts enacted in 2017, permanently lowering the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%.
Sadly, if signed into law, this bill will see an estimated 12 million low-income people lose their health insurance by cutting $1 trillion from Medicaid. A recent Georgetown University study found that 40% of children in small and rural towns receive their health insurance from Medicaid.
Making matters worse, the bill includes severe cuts to SNAP, also known as food stamps, by requiring adults ages 18-64 without disabilities to work at least 80 hours a month to receive benefits.
Along with this ugly bill, there are attempts to somehow evade the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution by ending birthright citizenship. Think about that for a moment; if they succeed in overturning birthright citizenship, they can essentially deport anyone for any reason.
Case in point, Trump called the New York state lawmaker Zohran Mamdani a “communist” and made the stupid claim that, “A lot of people are saying he’s here illegally. We’re going to look at everything.”
This is actual fascism, folks.
There are videos dropped online every day of masked ICE raids, dragging people off the street bound for the newly opened “Alligator Alcatraz” detention center in Florida. The Trump administration is so proud of their new concentration camp that they’re selling merchandise.
Trump is also selling a new cologne, a gold-plated “American” smartphone made in China, meme coins and anything else he can dupe his followers into buying.
Two Democratic state lawmakers were assassinated in Minnesota and it barely made a blip in the news cycle.
To top it off, an opinion from the Idaho Attorney General’s Office June 30 stated that an Idaho teacher can no longer display an “Everyone is Welcome Here” sign in their classroom after House Bill 41 went into effect July 1.
We’re not even hiding it anymore. America has become a cruel, desperate nation led by cruel, desperate people. The wheels came off long ago. We’re just shooting sparks right now. And lots of guns.
So hang your “No One is Welcome Here” sign, roll some coal on pedestrians and have a happy Fourth of July. You’ve certainly earned it.
