Hoo boy. Many of us slogged through a July 4 more vigil - "act of purposeful wakefulness" - than celebration as hostages of a dark timeline wherein history's smallest, weakest political "leader" and his racist cabal screech about "godless communists," one-party rule and forced sterilization of brown people who will "suicide your civilization" while masked Nazis march in the streets. Welcome to "exceptionalism," stripped of its pieties. The "danger of this age," notes one sage, "isn't merely organized hate (but) indifference to it."

In the summer of 1776, a few dozen brave men with much to lose who had "watched power gather dangerously into one man’s hands" came together in Philadelphia to pledge "our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor" to stop it. Concluding a long list of grievances against King George in their Declaration of Independence, they issued their ultimate moral and legal justification for the American colonies to sever ties with Great Britain: "A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.” Today, in his new show, Larry David echoes them.

On this Fourth of July, wrote John Pavlovitz, "Most of us were pulled between the despair of what this nation has become (or always has been) and the hope of what we might still be," leaving us "not knowing quite where to stand." We are "told today by the men who would humiliate us," he adds, "that America was founded in a spirit of innocence, that its leaders never did anything wrong, and that patriotism means insisting on our own blamelessness and assigning all evil to others" - this, in a country founded in genocide that blithely went on to institutionalize slavery and racism, then took to rampaging imperialism.

Despite the right's longtime myths about American "exceptionalism," for decades the arc of our political history has bent toward liberalism and the egalitarian ideals of its founding. No more. The last ten years, and especially the last two, have seen us hurtling backwards, obviously in large part due to the toxic rise of Trump, who "didn't invent America’s oldest prejudices (but) exploited them, legitimized them, rewarded them (and) transformed grievance into political identity." Writes Congressional candidate Fred Wellman, "The level of racism and bigotry this pathetic small man spits out daily could fill an algae-filled pool."

Last week saw some of what it's wrought. Death by firing squad - really - is on the rise: Idaho just became the first state to adopt it as its primary method of state murder, which can inflict "prolonged and agonising death," and it's the seventh state to include it in grisly execution rosters. SCOTUS hacks just stripped legal protections from over half a million Haitians and almost as many Syrians, prompting hateful vampire Megyn Kelly to spew, "Get out. Go home. Go back to fucking Haiti. We know our country’s better than yours (because) we filled it with our work ethic and culture and values. You being here only dilutes it for us."

MAGA ghouls emitted more vicious racist bilge after SCOTUS barely struck down Trump's "BLATANTLY UNCONSTITUTIONAL" move to strip birthright citizenship from U.S-born kids of non-citizens despite a 14th Amendment clearly stating anyone born here, even with dark skin, is a citizen. It was widely deemed a win for the rule of law, but it was also "one step away" from a scary "birthright precipice" that saw four judges construct 100 pages of legal arguments "to write immigrants’ children out of the Constitution and still call it jurisprudence." The ruling was "very nice," wrote Jonathan Last, like "it's nice when a person walking past you doesn't pull out a gun and shoot you...(The) majority followed the Constitution. Yay."

Still, the right freaked out, raving it was "a betrayal of the republic (that) cheapens the sacred value of American citizenship." Sample rants: "We are supposed to be a country, not an orphanage," "Any woman illegal alien who is capable of having a child needs to be rounded up and ejected," the "obvious lesson" of traitor Amy Barrett upholding "birth tourism of China's communist party" is to stop nominating female justices, "Mass deportations. Round every illegal up. Don’t pull back when the lesbian activists start screeching about it," and, "If you see a pregnant foreigner, contact ICE immediately - the future of our country depends on it.”

They want to ban foreign-born pregnant women, ban all female foreigners, do pregnancy screenings for those women, "require sterilization of all foreign visitors before entry," dissolve the Union. Todd Blanche will fight (imaginary) "birth tourism." J.D. Vance says his faith is why "we don't like low-wage foreigners stealing" jobs: "We want normal Americans to be able to live a dignified life, and I think that's a very Christian concept." Texas Rep.Troy Nehls wants a 10-year moratorium on immigration - "We gotta put a big bedsheet over the Statue of Liberty," maybe with cut-out eye holes and pointy hat? - "because we’re not letting anybody in."

As usual, a not-at-all-unhinged Stephen Miller won the Mein Kampf Award by arguing the ruling “requires you to suicide your civilization.” After proposing the case serve as a litmus test for all future judges, he warned - under a Fox chyron blaring “Birth Tourism Is A Ticking Bomb” - that it offers "a direct line into American cash (for) the rest of that child’s life (as mothers) send welfare checks back home to support a whole family." "They can just come into the country, have a baby in a hospital, paid for by you and me, and then that baby is automatically a citizen?" he howled. "And that baby can sit on a jury when he turns 18, and sit in judgment of...me?“

That baby won't be the only one. In The........

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