4th of July Fairy Tales

Our democracy turns 248 years old today—so, Happy Birthday America!

These days, I have to wonder if a former British colony, declared an independent nation by a small group of white, wealthy, well-connected, property-owning men, will reach its quarter century mark.

When reflecting on our founding, in ways, it reads like a fairy tale, the stuff of myth: not even 60 brave colonists gathered in 1776 to draft, approve, and sign the Declaration of Independence, knowing it was an act of treason. Together this rag-tag, all-volunteer army of farmers, lawyers, and merchants, rose up to throw off tyranny’s yoke. They were underdogs, facing off against one of the mightiest powers the world’s ever known.

To secure a set of fundamental freedoms for themselves through a novel form of democratic government, they declared:

Heady and inspiring words still. Yet today, I wonder: are any truths (let alone the ones enumerated above) still self-evident?

If the rights of life, liberty and pursuing happiness are unalienable, how did six unelected, billionaire-bought jurists deprive us of all three?

By overturning Roe v. Wade through the Dobbs decision, the MAGA Justices have now stolen these rights from 25 million Americans.¹ Denial and, in many cases, the criminalization of abortion healthcare has already and will continue to result in painful and avoidable loss of life. Republican abortion bans now deny 25 million Americans (plus each of us who loves them—spouses, partners, parents, children, siblings, or friends), our liberty from government surveillance, regulation, and forced subjugation.

And certainly, if this unelected branch of government has the power to strip agency from our own lives and liberties, how can tens of millions (or in truth, any) of us have the freedom to pursue happiness?

I can’t help but feel we’re living in a wicked fable—in this case The Handmaid’s Tale.

• First they came to ban abortions as early as six weeks into a pregnancy.

• Then, they came to ban all abortions, except (maybe) in the cases of rape, incest, and/or to protect the life of the mother.

• Now, they’ve come to ban IVF.

• Next, they’re coming to ban contraception.

It should be ‘self-evident’ that their attacks on our basic freedoms to decide if, when, or how to start or grow our families are a direct violation of the Constitution on which our nation was founded. But again, self-evident truths seem a rarity these days.

Take the so-called Presidential “debate” that CNN hosted last week. On one hand, you had President Biden truthfully and responsibly answering the 25+ questions Tapper and Bash indiscriminately lobbed. On the other, a jury-convicted felon lied virtually non-stop for 90 minutes, barely answered their questions, AND directly gish-galloped³ after Biden with ad hominem attacks and projection.

But since Biden, who’s struggled his entire life to tame a stutter, had a cold, and a few stumbles, while reacting like any normal person would, dumbstruck and incredulous in the face of a non-stop torrent of disinformation, lies,³ and gaslighting that Tapper, Bash, and CNN happily accommodated without a single fact check—the opinion editors of the corporate media and punditocracy have literally become Chicken-littles, Hen-pens and Turkey-lurkeys screaming that the sky is falling down,⁴ running all of us into the proverbial fox’s den to be devoured by the gaping maw of MAGA.

This was one debate, five months out.

Here’s Biden the very next morning, in Raleigh, North Carolina.

BTW, he kicked ass at this rally after standing on stage for 90+ minutes, then attending a Debate Watch after party, then stopping by a Waffle House before jetting to North Carolina to land after a 2 AM. After NC, he got back on a plane to fly to New York for a Pride/Stonewall remembrance to celebrate LGBTQ+ rights—all within a single 24 hour window! Don’t know about you, I’m tired thinking about it.

What should’ve been self-evident is that Biden had a bad night, but a very, very bad man—literally a jury convicted felon—is a greater danger to all of us now, than ever.

Tr*mp has nothing to offer but a politics of endless, faux-aggrieved culture war grifts and scams. The power the corporate media bestows on this unrepentant con man is nothing short of The Emperor’s New Clothes.⁵  

You don’t have to take my word for it, consider Allan Richtman’s (a historian who has correctly predicted the last 9 out of 9 Presidencies):⁶

The GOP’s Presidential nominee is nothing but naked racism, misogyny, nativism, and LGBTQ-hatred, bent on distracting and dividing us, all to escape accountability for his 91 criminal indictments. But since descending an escalator in 2015, the corporate media have ignored his naked avarice and treason by cloaking him in binary, conflict-driven narratives, forcing false equivalences through their both-sides, politics as a horse race frame—literally giving him and his lies, billions in free earned media and advertising.

Our ‘free press’ have abnegated their duty as the Fourth Estate, willfully ignoring the stakes of this election to poll obsess over the odds, in their craven service to higher profits.

Even after the most consequential and dangerous ruling in the Supreme Court’s history, passed by billionaire-bought MAGA justices, which literally violates the very reason for our founding, media and pundits are still focused on Biden, and not the black hole of fascism that’s just been unleashed.

This July 4th, let’s dispatch with fairy tales, fables and myth.

Let’s look clear-eyed at who has actually called for Biden to step down, who has had Biden’s back, and just how much Joe has already done for our country over the past three and a half years.

Then, let’s collectively set our sights on what is possible, when together, we AGAIN vote and work to get-out-the-vote to elect Democratic candidates to win the White House, the Congress, and state legislatures—as we did in 2018, 2020, and 2022.

This 4th of July, let’s celebrate our independence by fighting to protect our freedoms, while we still can.

1  Abortion Laws by State, Center for Reproductive Rights: reproductiverights.org/maps/abortion-laws-by-state/

2  “How to Beat Tr*mp in a Debate,” Mehdi Hassan, The Atlantic: theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/02/donald-trump-debate-strategy-gish-gallop/673061/

3  CNN’s Daniel Dale used three on-air minutes to ‘Fact Check’ Tr*mp’s 30+ lies several hours after it ended. Video and full fact check list.

4   “Henny Penny”, more commonly known in the United States as "Chicken Little" is a European folk tale about mass hysteria: fairytales.info/chicken-little-story

5  “The Emperor's New Clothes” first published in Denmark, by C. A. Reitzel, in 1837, as the third and final installment of Hans Christian Andersen's “Fairy Tales for Children”: andersen.sdu.dk/vaerk/hersholt/TheEmperorsNewClothes_e.html

6  Wikipedia lists 8 out of 9, but since some of the same corrupt Justices on the Supreme Court stopped the vote counting in Florida to transfer Al Gore’s win to George W. Bush, I count it as 9 out of 9 accurate predictions.