Postscript to July 4, 2026

We live in a country today where an authoritarian is destroying our democracy and the Rule of Law; where venture capitalists and hedge fund billionaires continue to destroy our democracy; where 401(k) s are still fraudulent games of theft and greed played within the wealthy financial sector; where numerous senators and representatives are pawns of a demented fool and the American Legislative Exchange Council; where “the privatization of health services has corresponded closely with skyrocketing costs, leaving millions of Americans without access to care or deeply in debt for seeking treatment for their illnesses.” 

We live in a country where Republicans are behind the scenes on the federal and local levels to eradicate Social Security and Medicare as overly costly entitlements given to working class people; where today’s Republicans aim to reduce the range of thought through doublespeak, denial and deceit; where language is stripped of reason and raped by propaganda. 

We live in a country where power is not a means for Trump; it is an end for him—power for its own sake; where plutocracy caters to self-interested desires and profit to the detriment of millions of Americans, while promising “freedom and prosperity;” where Free market principles advocate that the rich and poor should be taxed at the same flat rate, despite creating a vast inequity; where education, health care, retirement pensions, national parks (and most any function intrinsic to essential governing) become privatized to reap in more profits; where publicly-owned companies, services and their assets are auctioned off to private investors; where there is the allocation of vast amounts of wealth and resources from public to private ownership, and where there is also a transfer of private debts to the public sector. 

We live in a country where systemic racism and bigotry are rampant; where xenophobia is pervasive; and where hypocrisy, prevarication, incompetence, immorality, inequality, poverty, and injustice prevail. We have witnessed this trumped-up transformation and its exacerbation these past years. Trump is an authoritarian inhibited by no laws or moral consideration, and there are others who are just as avaricious, incompetent and dangerous as he is: Stephen Miller, Elon Musk, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Pete Hegseth, JD Vance, Marco Rubio, Pam Bondi, Scott Bessert, Howard Lutnick, Linda McMahon... The destruction of America's fragile democracy will be the result of our failure to respond to those among us who choose to repudiate empirical truth and falsify reality for power and greed. 

What our current weak democratic leadership needs to address, besides the antiquated filibuster and Freedom to Vote Act, is the lack of unity in the Democratic Party; the Republican propagation of lies; the ongoing Republican subversion of the next elections; the Republican attempt to rigged the voting system in their favor; the Republican focus on voting in partisan supervisors for elections; Republican gerrymandering; Republican legislator purges; Republican attacks on Medicare and Social Security; Republican obstruction of serious gun control legislation; Republican (or theocratic!) takeover of the U.S. Supreme Court; rising American religious fundamentalism; the pandemic's long-range effects on healthcare; the unvaccinated and their effects on hospitals and the economy; the global demand for thermal energy; the climate crisis; the education and teacher crisis; cyber security; immigration reform; corporate corruption; pharmaceutical greed; wage stagnation, inflation and reflation; Russia, China, North Korea, Venezuela, and Iran... 

What the Democratic Party also needs to consider (when it finally takes over the House) is the income inequality and unfair taxation of the wealthy elite; the availability of healthcare for those who cannot afford it; an expansion of Medicare to include dental, vision and hearing benefits; more reduction of prescription drug prices; the continuing expansion of the Child Tax Credit; and the incarceration of a revengeful, demented, narcissistic, sociopathic criminal, to name just a few. 

-Glen Brown