CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

The Madness of Kings – A Semi-Quincentennial

Sue Coe, Backpacks, 2026. Courtesy the artist.

On July 4, 2026, the U.S. will celebrate its 250th birthday. That’s the date in 1776, when leaders of the 13 original colonies signed a Declaration of Independence, announcing their intention to free themselves from British rule and establish a new nation. The document remains inspiring, especially its second paragraph which begins:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government…

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government…

1776 marked the pinnacle of American, democratic aspiration; it’s been downhill from there. The Revolutionary War was brutal. In addition to battle deaths, tens of thousands of soldiers on prison ships died from sickness. In the southern colonies, both sides of the conflict refused quarter, simply executing men who surrendered or were captured. To the north in Pennsylvania and New York, George Washington’s troops attacked Native American (Iroquois) villages to punish them for siding with the British, or to gain territory and resources.

After the war’s conclusion, the new American Constitution, ratified in 1788, enabled slavery and enshrined a deeply un-democratic system of election. The following century saw Indigenous genocide, invasion of Mexico, Civil War (among the most bloody in history), and, after a brief period of racial democracy, de jure segregation in the South that lasted until the 1960s. Since Jefferson, there has been an unbroken lineage of mediocre or worse presidents (save Lincoln and FDR), supine or corrupt legislators (again, with rare exceptions), and complacent, dishonest, or anti-democratic Supreme Court justices. In the last few years alone, during Democratic as well as Republican administrations, the U.S. has enabled genocide in Gaza, waged aggressive war in Iraq and Iran, kidnapped or murdered foreign nationals, violated principles of habeas corpus that date back to Magna Carta, and engaged in ecocide. Trump’s regime may be seen as the culmination of all this: Kakistocracy — rule by the worst, or better “pathocracy,” governance by a psychopathic minority.

The significance of July 4, 2026, therefore, is not that it will be the semi-quincentennial of the Declaration of Independence. The basic tenets of the document, contained in the three sentences cited above, are much more honored in the breach than in the observance. Instead, it’s the anniversary of the pathocracy. In both 1776 and 2026, madmen — King George III and President Donald Trump – each recklessly plunged their nations into war.

The madness of king George

Four years after assuming the crown in 1760, British King George III approved a series of parliamentary acts – chiefly taxes and tariffs – that alienated American colonists and aroused resistance. First there were the Sugar and Currency Acts, and then a year later in 1765, the Stamp Act, which required American colonists to pay for an official stamp to be affixed to all legal documents, as well as newspapers, books and playing cards. The Act aroused popular consternation both for the cost and perceived violation of the traditional “rights of Englishmen.” To the colonists, the Stamp Act and other tariffs represented “taxation without representation” since they had no representatives in the British parliament. (Each American colony had its own legislature and taxing authority.) Protests, sometimes violent, spread from Massachusetts to Georgia, leading at last to parliamentary repeal, approved by King George.

But that wasn’t the end of efforts by parliament and the king to extract money from the colonists and secure obeisance. There followed in 1773 the notorious Tea Tax which prompted direct action – the Boston Tea Party in which local members of the Sons of Liberty (a clandestine militia) dumped about 340 casks of tea belonging to the East India Company into Boston Harbor. In Philadelphia, another Tea Party convened to prevent the unloading of a shipment of tea from England. In response, the crown escalated the dispute by passage of what Americans called “The Intolerable Acts (1774) aimed mostly at Massachusetts. The Acts: 1) mandated that the Royal Navy and British Army blockade Boston harbor and occupy the city until colonists compensated the East India Company for the destroyed tea; 2) permitted the quartering of British troops in colonial homes and other private facilities; and 3)  directed that British officials or soldiers accused of capital crimes be charged and tried in British courts alone. That final provision became known in the colonies as “The Murder Act” because it effectively meant that any British official in America could get away with murder.

With anger in the colonies at a pitch, the king and parliament had one more chance to avoid war. In 1775, the Second Continental Congress passed the Olive Branch Petition........

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