Saddest Independence Day
Losing our Republic
From a Google Image Search - Newsweek - Getty Images
This may be the saddest Independence Day ever, although there were probably some sad ones during WWI and WWII and during the Great Depression, not to mention the Civil War. Still, 7.4.2025 is right up there on the sadness scale. Trump deliberately chooses our national holidays to rub our noses in his miserable victories because either he thinks of himself as a great patriot, or he likes to destroy significant historical moments as much as he loves to rewrite our history. He has designed the pieces of his awful budget bill so that the most monstrous cuts will not be felt until after the 2028 election. Of course, he also promised Americans, as if giving us a great gift, that we will never have to vote again. There may have been similar moments in other decades, but no fascist ever made it to the Oval Office before.
We have no idea how to stop Republicans and Trump from shutting us in, isolating us from the rest of the world. However, we do know that isolation on such a small and extravagantly populated planet is quite impossible. If we save a few millions by ending any food or medical assistance to poorer nations, nations where changes in climate are making already dire lives almost impossible, then diseases that have been under control will find their way everywhere. We may shut our borders, we may force Americans to pick our crops and remain uneducated so that they will do the menial jobs that they will qualify for, but we will have to wait for several generations to produce enough people kept in ignorance to take those jobs. We could starve in the meantime.
If you go down some of the rabbit holes on the internet, the ones that have you wading through hour-long videos to get to the product that promises to solve your problem, perhaps you will have encountered the predictions about the disastrous effects that AI will have on nations around the globe. They tell us that AI is going to devastate the employment market. AI doesn't require any employee benefits and has no human needs for breaks, or raises, or unions. AI will follow company rules for dealing with customers, not showing compassion for individual needs. AI will bring about the end of the knowledge economy (no wonder we are being told to avoid colleges and universities). Only the elite (wealthy) will be smart.
We are told that there will be a wholesale value transfer in terms of decisions about which business will succeed. Businesses that use AI do better than businesses that don't. AI-powered companies' shares have skyrocketed, says one rabbit hole video. The "Great Replacement" has already begun we are told. AI is replacing knowledge work, not low-level work. "The American Dream is now a game where the rich always come out on top," says the video stream. Traditional investing strategies will fail and there will be a fundamental restructuring of how wealth is created.
One video said that this would be an "extinction event in real time" and spoke of "Digital Darwinism," meaning that companies that don't adapt will go out-of-business. We cannot adapt this fast, says the script. AI is smarter than 95% of the population. The voiceover tells us that "tech leaders are accelerating this process." The internet caused enormous changes in employment, then cloud computing did the same thing without much of a pause to catch our collective breath. Now AI will "remove humans from the equation entirely, creating an "economic singularity."
What does this mean for a consumer-centered economy? If no one works, then no one buys. Why will there be businesses at all? Why would even the most elite figures in the tech world want outcomes like this? Will they just live in their bunkers, travel in their yachts, and use us all as slave labor?
It's difficult to imagine why any smart individual or any group of intelligent and wealthy people would want to continue on a path that might lead to "the economic singularity," unless their ultimate goal is the extinction of the human race, and indeed, all living things.
If workers can't make money, then capitalism is dead, business is dead and the mean things in the terrible Trump bill become mere rubber bullets aimed at targets that are small compared to what the tech elites have planned for us.
Or perhaps Trump's cruel behavior is a distraction to keep us from noticing a far more nefarious global plan. Perhaps the rumors of the plan for global extinction are intended to give autocracy time to take hold in America. Our paranoia grows. Are we helpless, or can we come up with a plan to take matters back in our hands, especially when we are not privy to whether there is a master plan at all?
What's in the One Big Beautiful (in your face) Bill (OB3)?
1. Extension of 2017 Trump tax cuts
2. Steep cuts to Medicaid (over next decade)
3. Social Security taxes allow increase to $6,000 deduction
4. Increasing state and local tax deduction (SALT)
5. Cuts to food benefits by 2028
6. Boosts defense and border spending
7. No tax on overtime or tips, increase in child tax credit to $2,200. if at least one parent has a social security number, raises debt ceiling by $5T
Clean energy incentives from Biden era are phased out by 2028
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0eqpz23l9jo
Sorry to sound so negative. Is it appropriate or not? I live my life each day in hope. I wish that for my followers and subscribers also.
I’ve had many low points in my life. When they happen, I really grieve for the situation, and when that’s done, I get back to work on getting myself out of it. I think many finally understand that there’s no going back. No one will rescue us. We have to plan what to do next, start where you’re the most comfortable and move up. If we’re to make a new America stick, we have to plan, have a coalition “welcome to the fight”, and be ready. This will take time. But look what the French Resistance did in Vichy during WWII. Vive la resistance !
I agree. It's hard to feel celebratory this year. Good piece.