What A Country

 July 4, 2025

As patriotic Americans celebrate our nation’s independence this year, it will be under a cloud of irony. It will be ironic that 99% of the fireworks exploding and lighting up our skies will have been made in China, a major trading partner, now subject to crippling 30% tariffs. It will be even more ironic that, while we commemorate our nation’s independence from British rule, the reality of systemic inequalities, political division, and social unrest are now the norm.

The nation was founded on the principle that "All Men are Created Equal," asserting that every individual possesses unalienable rights. Nevertheless, social inequalities persist, and equality is not universally experienced. Although slavery was officially abolished over 162 years ago by the Emancipation Proclamation, disparities remain. Not all citizens enjoy equal access to the rights enshrined in the Constitution. Skin color, sexual orientation, religious and political affiliation, ethnic origin, education, and financial status will all be used to judge your ability to access and enjoy those “guaranteed” freedoms.

The United States was known as “the melting pot” for its broad ethnic diversity. Now, the Statue of Liberty, aka the “Mother of Exiles,” and the Emma Lazarus poem welcoming “your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” has been replaced by a large STOP sign and concertina wire. The reality of exclusion is now hard policy.

The “budget reconciliation bill” known as OBBBA will be signed into law this July 4, 2025, adding even more irony to our 249th birthday celebrations. To quote a line from Tennessee Earnie Ford's song Sixteen Tons, we will be “Another day older and deeper in debt.” Our debt ceiling will be raised $5 trillion, social services will be slashed to pay for tax cuts overwhelmingly benefitting the wealthy, and the president gets to enforce his will with the largest police force in our nation’s history and their $90 billion expansion package. So much for spending cuts.

As we celebrate the birth of a nation founded on the ideals of liberty, representation, and democratic self-governance, and fireworks light the sky honoring our independence from the rule of an unaccountable power, we see a president sign into law a bill that raises questions about those very founding principles. The bill is called OBBBA for the One Big Beautiful Bill Act when it should be called OBBBAMA. That way they could blame anything bad that happens on Obama. The acronym stands for One Big Beautiful Bill Act My Ass.

The irony here is hard to miss: On a day where we celebrate freedom from arbitrary governance, legislation such as this is a slap in the face of democracy. When the glow of the fireworks dims and the reality of the days that will follow begin to dawn, we would do well to consider not just what independence meant in 1776, but what it should mean to us now. As a nation, we will always be great, but we could be better. To quote Yakov Smirnoff, “What a country.”