Why Independence Day Feels More Funeral Dirge Than Celebration This Year

There’s a heaviness in the air this Fourth of July, and it’s not just the wildfire smoke, supply chain shortages, or the inflation-devoured hot dogs. It’s the somber realization that we’re not celebrating freedom anymore—we’re clinging to the idea of it like a memory fading in real time.

The fireworks still pop, the flags still wave, and the politicians still churn out their obligatory patriotism on social media—usually accompanied by some family photo and a suspiciously perfect American flag. But the undercurrent this year isn’t pride. It’s dread. The kind you feel when something sacred is being hollowed out and everyone’s pretending not to notice.

Let’s be honest: this country is not okay. The Supreme Court, once imagined as a bastion of impartial justice, is now the ideological wrecking crew of democracy. In just the past few weeks, it has handed the President a de facto license to break the law without consequence, stripped away judicial checks, and greenlit the government to detain and deport without due process. That’s not freedom. That’s a police state with extra steps.

And while we’re here, maybe it’s time to stop pretending that ICE raids, mass surveillance, and politically motivated prosecutions are just “unfortunate necessities.” They’re deliberate. Strategic. Designed to terrify and silence. You don’t have to be an immigrant to feel the creeping chill. You just have to be paying attention.

This isn’t some radical reimagining of America—it’s a rollback. A deliberate, coordinated regression into something darker. A place where elections are litigated more in court than at the ballot box. Where “free speech” is a punchline, and truth is whatever gets the most likes on Truth Social. Where history is rewritten by people who think banning books will make their kids less gay, less Black, less empathetic, use fewer pronouns.

For years we’ve been told the system is self-correcting. That the guardrails will hold. That democracy may wobble, but it doesn’t fall. Well, here we are. Watching the judiciary become a bludgeon. Watching Congress gridlocked into irrelevance. Watching governors pass anti-democratic laws while courts nod in approval. And through it all, a media ecosystem more interested in ratings than resistance.

So, sure, light your fireworks. But do it with the knowledge that some states are arresting protestors faster than they are violent criminals. Grill your burgers while you still can afford the meat. Wrap yourself in the flag—but maybe ask who else that flag is supposed to protect. And more importantly, who it never really has.

This year, Independence Day doesn’t feel like a celebration of liberty. It feels like a desperate attempt to remember what liberty was supposed to be. It’s the national anthem at half speed. The bell that tolls, not in triumph, but in mourning.

Because while we’re distracted by barbecues and baseball, authoritarianism is being normalized in real time. Every unchecked abuse of power, every suppressed vote, every school board takeover or library closure—these are not isolated events. They’re part of a mosaic. A portrait of decline. And behind it all are people who are counting on us to look away, to shrug, to say “that’s just politics.”

But it’s not. It’s a slow-motion constitutional arson. And the fire’s getting harder to ignore.

We’re not just watching a country unravel. We’re watching its myths rot from the inside. The myth of equal justice. The myth of checks and balances. The myth that liberty is a birthright instead of a fight.

And the saddest part? The silence of the good people who still think this is temporary.

Because if we wait until the sirens get louder, until the boots are at the door, until the cages aren’t just for children on the border but for the loud, the defiant, the inconvenient—then we’ll know we waited too long.

And that’s not a warning. That’s a prophecy America keeps putting to the test.