On this July 4th, we must recognize that we are a fundamentally different nation than we were even yesterday. This holiday should be marked not just with celebration, but with humility, an acknowledgment of how often we’ve shown irreverence for history and neglected the deep interconnectedness of the human experience.
I still believe in a nation that aspires to live up to its democratic ideals. However, we must also acknowledge the limits of power and embrace an imagination rooted in possibility rather than exhaustion, one that solves rather than compounds our problems.
No nation, like no person, will ever be perfect.
But the act of striving—of trying to get closer to justice, closer to dignity, closer to shared purpose—that is, and has always been, the essence of the American spirit.
When a society stops striving and starts atrophying, that is when the experiment in self-government begins to fail.
"When a society stops striving and starts atrophying, that is when the experiment in self-government begins to fail."
It looks like we failed. The BBB has just authorized Trump to create his own Sturmabeitlung of thugs. Some call it a GESTAPO (which means Geheime Staatspolizei, which translates to "Secret State Police"" That is not, that would be the NSA/FBI.
Under Trump, Homeland Security, CBP and ICE will be combined into a tax payer funded Sturmabeitlung/Schutz Staffel.This Bill funds HS, ICE, CBP, paramilitary forces, to the tune of more than $100 billion making it the 4th largest military budget , in the world ahead of Germany.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_highest_military_expenditures
This isn't 1933, this is 1934 after the Reichstag burning. Trump is using the Los Angeles protests as a Reichstag stand in.