Independence Day again, and what I want to know -- what's uppermost in my mind -- is who eats the most hotdogs now that Joey Chestnut is out of the play.
OK. So that's not really what's uppermost in my mind.
No, what's uppermost in my mind is how 13 colonies that were as different from one another as, say, Sweden and Kuala Lumpur, managed to agree on something so recklessly audacious: Breaking with Mother England even when it meant taking up arms against the greatest military power on earth.
I still don't know how they did it. I still don't know how they convinced France to rescue us even though the last thing the French wanted to do was get into another expensive go-around with England. And I still don't know how our Constitution, riddled with contradiction as it is, has managed to survive no matter how often it's been bent to the whims of self-interest.
Mostly, though, I still marvel at whatever divine providence or sheer crazy luck was involved in the 13 colonies deciding to break away at exactly the right moment in history, because they did it when the Brits themselves were still paying off their last war (the French and Indian, as it was known in North America) and were weary to death of armed conflict.
Somebody up there likes us, I've concluded. Even when we're not particularly likeable, and God knows there have been plenty of times in our 248 years when we haven't been.
Which brings me to the other day, when I saw a quote so breathtakingly at odds with American values I almost literally gasped: "... we are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be."
In other words: Submit to the Revolution or we'll kill you. 'Cause, you know, freedom and 'Merica and all that.
The person who said this is named Kevin Roberts, and he's the president of the right-wing Heritage Foundation. He's also the architect of Project 2025, which is the right's master plan to dismantle the levers of government and replace them with levers loyal not to the country but to the whims of one deranged man.
That man, of course, is former president Donald Trump, felon, chiseler, sexual predator and con man extraordinaire. A shameless idolator of autocrats and dictators, he wants to be one when he grows up. To help with that he's got a cult awash in religious mania, and a pet Supreme Court that just cleared the road by ruling the divine right of kings should apply to presidents, too.
Because of that, and much else, lots of people seem to think if the con man extraordinaire gets back in the White House, the American democratic experiment is effectively done.
Me?
I think there's a measure of mania to that, too.
I say this not because I don't believe Trump, and the manic persecution complex he's used to animate his base, are dangerous and in some cases lethal. They are. Delusion always is, and when Kevin Roberts and those he represents start talking about "a second American Revolution" to restore freedoms they already have in abundance, that is delusion at its most extreme. And the card played by every vicious tyrant throughout history.
However.
However, I go back to that American experiment, and how often it's prevailed even when it sabotaged the prevailing. And I think it will prevail over Trumpism and the lunacy it represents, if for no other reason than like all such lunacies this one contains the seeds of its own destruction.
This is not to say Trump and his fellow travelers, unhinged as they are, can't do plenty of damage. Immense damage, even. But I refuse to believe the damage would be irrevocable -- and, yes, I know how impossibly naive that sounds right now.
But you know why I say that?
I say it because, if America could survive everything it's survived in 248 years, it can survive Donald Trump if it comes to that.
(And for the sake of -- and in some cases the very lives of -- pregnant women and gays and transgenders and desperate migrant families and other marginalized populations, God forbid it does come to that.)
If America could survive the Articles of Confederation and the chaos that attended them, it can survive Orange Julius Caesar.
If it could survive leaving slavery to be decided by a ruinous and unimaginably destructive civil war, it can survive Training Wheels Mussolini.
If it could survive wars and rumors of wars ... and the brutal suppression of constitutional guarantees at various times ... and the assassination of four presidents ... and every injustice inflicted by malice, greed, bigotry or simple thoughtlessness ...
Well. If America could survive all that, I figure it can survive a lying, conniving, fear-mongering wretch like The Former Guy. Because it has before.
Anyway ... have a great Fourth. And if you're going to do fireworks, for God's sake try not to blow off anything vital.
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