DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE
You can celebrate Saturday, but I will be waiting until November, thank you ...
After many decades of inspiring exploration, the development of life-saving vaccines, social progress, and righteous wars against genocide and hate, America the not-so-beautiful is celebrating her 250th birthday Saturday with a lying, orange 80-year-old bigot in our White House, who hates science and reading, and is losing a war with algae.
It’s very disheartening, it really is …
There will be no celebrating around my house on Saturday, just thanks that the day only lasts 24 hours.
On our nation’s birthday we are being held up by a loathsome convicted felon who has made the most powerful city in the world look tiny and cheap, and exactly in his image.
We are the laughingstock of democracies around the world, and fascists’ favorite color.
Trump is everything we knew and feared he was, and Saturday for me will be just another day when I continue doing everything in my power to help rid ourselves of him and his repellent kind.
Independence from him (and them) is all I am interested in right now.
I have heard people make the plea not to let Trump and his America-attacking cult ruin this celebration of stubborn staying power, but the truth is 2026 was already ruined for me in 2024. That’s when America doubled down and repeatedly punched itself in the face in an absurd attempt to finish itself off for good.
When Trump was reelected, it was a brutal verification that 2016 wasn’t some cheap one-off, just a warmup act for our annihilation. Trump had once again acquired the most powerful military in the world, and this time was happy to let everybody know he was going to use it everywhere, including against Americans.
Minneapolis, Los Angeles, Washington and scores of other cities are under attack by the slobbery, draft-dodging coward, who has never served a single thing except himself.
He simply refused to go away after attacking our country on Jan. 6, 2021, and lurked everywhere like career abusers always do, just waiting for his chance to threaten and pounce on a victim who had the gall to push him away.
Joe Biden, along with Merrick Garland’s Justice Department, were unable to keep us safe from the greatest homegrown threat to America since the Civil War, and I have run out of words to lash out about that in complete disgust.
I wish Biden well, I really do, but when he welcomed Trump back to the White House in front of that crackling fire, it would have been fine if I never heard from him again.
That was the saddest day of all for me, because I knew for a fact I was played for a damn fool, and I am too old to suffer that kind of indignity. You get no second chances with me when it comes to loyalty, and I suppose that is a strength and a weakness.
But I know who I am, and what I stand for, and surrendering to hideous people like Trump isn’t one of them.
Even if I couldn’t think any less of my country on that sorry day it reaffirmed like never before that we the people have the power if only we’d use it. These money-inhaling political parties were only getting in our way to something better.
My sadness turned into righteous anger, and for all this hell we are dealing with by the hour, I am actually feeling pretty good about our chances of pulling our country out of the Republicans’ roaring fire.
We have found each other, picked ourselves up, and for the most part, have learned to verify before we so easily trust. I’m not much interested in how Democratic you are, only that we share a common goal of righting wrongs, and returning this country to the people who love it enough to fix its many ills instead of belligerently calling it great.
Most Democratic politicians were somehow slow to get this after our humiliating defeat in 2024, but many are coming around now, because they can feel our heat. The party overall is about as popular as Trump, and has a leader in the Senate who is even less so.
As an Independent I am not here to stomp on the Democratic Party, but I am here to help the party grow stronger, more diverse, and less stupid.
Right now as I type this — with the country staring at its most important elections ever — silly factions in the party are slapping each other around to see who can get a seat at the head of the kiddy table. They control nothing, and are proving it by having a pathetic food fight while the billionaires eat our lunch.
It is absolutely insane it really is, because nobody is completely right or wrong, but they better be completely against MAGA, which is the only thing that matters right now. Purity tests only help Trump muddy our waters, and nobody — I mean NOBODY — is dirtier than he is.
Look, if a centrist like Abigail Spanberger works for Virginia, I am happy to live with that. If a Democrat socialist like Zohran Mamdani works in NYC, right on. If Progressive Graham Platner can FINALLY rid us of the disgusting Susan Collins in Maine, you go, buddy. If a Christian like James Talarico can topple Texas, my ten-gallon hat’s off to him.
I am not Christian, socialist, progressive, or centrist, just an old Navy vet who wants to kick the Republicans’ asses in November.
That the Left is still engaged in this petty, nuclear-powered idiocy is just too much to take. So a plea from the bottom of my heart and the pit of my roiling stomach:
KNOCK IT THE HELL OFF WITH THE DIVISIVENESS.
We need to get over ourselves. I have no idea of everything you want in a candidate, dear reader, but I am 100 percent sure I know what you don’t want: more Trump and his fascist regime.
So yeah, I’ve heard more than enough about July 4th, 2026, and want all the focus on November 3rd, when we will have a real opportunity to celebrate our independence.
(D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here, and follow him on Bluesky here.)
In Oregon where fireworks are legal (a discussion for another day), there are tents in parking lots all over the place that sell them. In the past, you'd hear firecrackers 10 days ahead of July 4. Last year, crickets. This year, quieter than crickets. People are not feeling the love of country, not in a celebratory mood.
This year I have no desire to celebrate the Fourth of Lies. And I will wait to see what happens in November because I fear every dirty trick Republicans will pull to rig the midterms.