F*ck the fireworks and flip the flags.

There is nothing to celebrate here.

We shouldn’t be singing right now; we should be grieving.
We should be sitting vigil for the country we could have had but may never see.
We should be mourning over how little of our aspirations of Independence have trickled down to the people in the streets.
We should be lamenting how commonplace hatred has become in this supposed “sweet land of Liberty.”

Most of all, we should be embarrassed… no, mortified, that no matter how it happened, Democracy has all but died on our watch here.

Nearing the quarter-century mark in our nation’s life, we have collectively failed those who came before by allowing the ascension of the very fascism millions of our forebears courageously fought, bled, and died driving back into the sewers of history.

The moral cancer they defeated on the other side of the planet, we have allowed to make its home here:

Mass abductions by government-deputized goons are not relegated to some ancient, jittery black-and-white newsreels from half a world away; they unfold in live-streamed phone videos from the streets of this alleged land of the free, showing masked, traitorous cowards draped in the colors they aren’t worthy of wearing.

Death camps are not the crumbled carcasses of a foreign failure of humanity that serve as memorial site, cautionary tales for decent people; they are the newly christened pride and joy of monstrous men and women who have the stratospheric gall to costume themselves in the flag that actual courageous lovers of this nation wore as they expired on our behalf.

The grim propaganda military parades of unrepentant sociopathic dictators aren’t trapped in the amber blocks of discolored textbook photos; they are real-time travesties recently disgracing our National Mall.

And all of it: the breathtaking brutality against our most vulnerable, the unthinkable Constitutional assaults, the collective moral collapse of an entire party, and the disregard for the laws of the land, is packaged in a facade of patriotism that would be laughable were it not a deadly, sinful, vomit-inducing farce.

This is the paradox that decent Americans find ourselves in.

Our essential liberties have never been more at risk, our electoral process never more assailed, our national sovereignty never more tenuous, our elemental freedoms never more in doubt—and yet the patriotic fervor by this felonious, soulless narcissist, his twisted cadre of cosplaying Christian ghouls, and in their mouth-breathing, flag-waving rank-and-file has never been greater.

This is by design.

Weaponized patriotism is an intoxicant for easily manipulated people whose identities are shaped by those they hate, the neighbors and strangers they’ve been convinced are threats to be eradicated and dangers to be sent away.

With enough star-spangled rhetoric, rockets’ red glare spectacle, and red, white, and blue dog-and-pony distractions, you can make such people believe that they are winning, even while they are being led down the parade route and straight into the slaughterhouse.

And so this year, the anthems play and the flags wave and the bottle rockets ascend and the M-80’s go off and Fascism quietly enters in the side door while everyone is distracted by the spectacle—everyone, except for those of us who still remember what the hell this beautiful experiment was reaching for to begin with.

This is why these songs of freedom will still ring hollow this July 4th, because those of us who love this country realize how far we are from the aspirations of the songs and ideals they point to, and how transparently thin the tether is to them.

We will be grieving, not because this country deserves better than this party and the amoral monster gorging himself on our citizenry, but because right now it does deserve them; because we wish it to be something far greater than their ceremonial patriotism and the phony pro-life Christianity they wear when it benefits them.

We see what a farce this all is: watching a joyless, mindless death cult led by rapists, racists, and careers criminals making a mockery of an America whose diversity, plurality, and liberty they despise and are actively eliminating.

So yes, we’ll be loving our country fiercely this July 4th and beyond, by not letting it remain what it currently is and by opposing the fraudulence of their performative patriotism.

We will be working and protesting and loving and building and caring and voting and pushing it to become a place deserving of the songs and the fireworks and the fervor.

When freedom rings for all of us, then we’ll sing.

Until then, we see the joke here—and we don’t think it’s funny.