On the day after…
I spent the Fourth of July like many of you probably did: enjoying the festivities, going through the motions of patriotic joy, while wondering what it really means within the context of what’s happening to America right now. How do you manage to juggle the celebration of this nation’s founding ideals with the travesty of what’s happening here in 2025?
It’s been a day, and I’m still not sure I have an answer. But while I was reading over an excellent article that my friend Robert Harrington is publishing here on Palmer Report later today, something occurred to me: America has never been fully able to line up its reality with its ideals. This is a nation that was founded on the premise of equality while constitutionally condoning slavery. This is a nation that was founded on the premise of freedom while stealing land from natives. This is a nation in which a woman couldn’t get her own credit card until just a few decades ago.
None of this is meant to bash America. Quite the opposite. America has been getting things wrong from the start, fixing them along the way, partially screwing up those things again, and then having to fix things yet again. The only consistent thing about all this inconsistency is that over the long run, we’ve generally gotten better at this. Higher lows followed by higher highs. In this flawed human condition, it’s perhaps all one can hope for.
Here in this second Trump era (how I loathe typing those words), it can be difficult to remember any of the above. Things in 2025 are as bad as, or worse then, they’ve been in a long time. But America has had it low points before. We’ve always found a way to bounce back, no matter how ugly those low points have been or how long they’ve lasted.
We can bounce back again. We have to. We have no choice. This evil monster and his depraved devotees are digging America into one of its bigger holes. But that doesn’t mean we have to choose to stay there once this is all said and done. We are the saviors of American democracy and humanity. You and me. After all, somebody has to do it.
