Despite eliciting sensible chuckles, the introductory joke fails on three counts. Four if you count Uvular writing it.

First, celebrating July 4, 2026, as a semiquincentennial for the United States of America makes a person complicit in a barely believable fiction.

America did not officially exist until July 21, 1787. That day saw New Hampshire’s legislature ratify the U.S. Constitution, giving the charter of a new nation conceived in liberty the ninth signature required to take effect.

From the initial public reading of the unsigned Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia through the Revolutionary War and well after warring parties agreed to the Treaty of Paris, the entities that would eventually agglomerate as the US of A operated in a loose coalition lacking a budget, a bureaucracy, or enforceable rules. America, by any honest reckoning, stands eleven years away from a milestone national birthday.

Tackling Uvular off that hobbyhorse still leaves the mob confronting incontrovertible evidence that the clock on American independence should start ticking on June 19, 1865. B belated enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation commenced then in Texas. Until that inaugural Juneteenth, holdout jerkass enslavers refused to free Black people they used as forced labor and treated as saleable commodities. Only fabulism and farce can justify valorization of an independence solely for white residents of a country.

But why not just play along, get along? The Visigoths certainly made hay for three days after taking the Eternal City by siege in 410 CE.

The third cause to rue one’s momentary mirth after reading the lead paragraph spawns from sparing a thought for residents of the erstwhile capital of the soon-to-fall Roman Empire. Average, exalted, and debased city dwellers had no reason to raise wineskins and dance proto polkas with rampaging raiders. Even the unnamed traitorous, collaborating, or simply resigned Romans who opened to the Salarian Gate to King Alaric I’s horde surely came to regret their actions.

History does nothing except rhyme as regrettably as Chet Haze. A motley mishmash of the malign, melaninphobic, mendacious, misogynistic, and misguided have spent all of America’s federated small-R republican regnancy damnably shepherding Barbarians through constitutional, legal, and bureaucratic gates erected to forestall autocracy, ethnonationalism, fascism, oligarchy, and theocracy. Installing a regime that uses Project 2025 as its operations manual culminated centuries of efforts to dismantle good and equitable governance. A quip premised on resonances between fatal failures of gatekeeping rings too true to treat as a mere jest.

A Long Slide for an Out

♫ No more shall I be, loyal to my sorrowful country ♫

— “Loyal to My Sorrowful Country,” Ted Leo and the Pharmacists

Reluctance to join a rah-rah chorus convened by rogues who relish in retaliating against those who recognize realities of America’s regrettable revanchism should not surprise. Singing America’s Body Electric in the wake of voiding the Voting Rights Act, innumerable violations of constitutional prohibitions on presidents accepting emoluments, and executive branch crime after crime after crime feels nigh unto impossible.

Everyone saw remorseless acts of civic vandalism coming. Hell, who other than the willfully ignorant could miss right-wing politicians publicly and vociferously making it their sworn mission to undo the New Deal before the expiration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s first 100 days. And name another U.S. Supreme Court case more accurately, ominously title than Trump v. United States. Granting an enemy domestic such as Trump absolute immunity for all past, ongoing, and future crimes amounts to putting a gun to the temple of a rules-based governance.

In similar fashion, Rome’s sacking arrived as both a bit of an anticlimax and a gut punch. The Western Empire’s government decamped to present-day Milan some two hundred years earlier. The intellectual and commercial hearts of the greater empire beat in the Eastern capital of Constantinople since at least the 320s.

Alaric and his lads only took Rome on their third try. That sucked for Romans, as noted above, but sales of Ministry CDs and Bauhaus t-shirts to visible Goths skyrocketed.

Not for nothing, this section’s title “Long Slide for an Out” comes from a Del Fuegos song featuring the line “No kind of lie could ever justify what you put me through.” Apt for what Americans sold themselves versus what they received.

Spotlighting the inexorable build toward American exceptionalism’s lowest ebb makes living near a branching of the darkest timeline hurt the heart and insult the intellect even more than it might. So many opportunities to prevent negative outcomes by enforcing laws without fear or favor, guaranteeing one person one vote, and loving the country more than oneself got missed, abandoned, or actively blocked by judges, elected officials, and ordinary citizens who should have done better. So many.

Viewed in those terms, no one should wonder why, on one reading of her lyrics suggests, Detroiter and member of Uvular’s latest musical obsession Infinity Song Momo Boyd believes she cannot at the same time love America as a country and stay true to herself as an American. Nor should one critique Indiana-born punk rocker/power popster Ted Leo for appearing to nope out of patriotism altogether. One could ask, instead, why anyone could do aught but demur or denounce.

Idly Idealizing Ideas

♩ I’m out in Pittsylvania County on Highway 718
Middle of a corn field
No, I’m not too late
There’s about thirteen ’67 Chevy Malibus in a circle
In the cornfield
With their headlights on
And I can feel it
I can feel it ♩

“Wide Open,” Mojo Nixon and Skid Roper (a.k.a., Uvular’s nominee for the new national anthem)

Orators striving for eloquence, as well as an essayist setting up an expletive-included observation two paragraphs hence, characterize America as a nation founded upon ideas. Recently departed Danville, Pittsylvania County, Virginia, product Neill Kirby McMillan Jr. enters the discussion here not so much as a counterpoint to Boyd or Leo, but as an invitation to redirect energies spent on recrimination and rejection toward revivifying Americanness.

This has happened. Abolitionists, union organizers, and civil rights activists partially redeemed promissory notes issued in the country’s founding documents. Doing so once more requires recapturing and resetting ideas about freedom, liberty, truth, justice, and—why not?—the American Way. The author of this overlong rumination uses an American flag as the placard for his protest signs as part of that project.

Reactionaries too often succeed in inculcating reductive, self-serving, and exclusionary conceptions of what Americans should expect in return for their national identity. “Freedom” for instance, traditionally gets defined as something only white, male, wealthy, nominally Christian (sometimes including Catholic and Mormon) citizens older than 18 fully enjoy. Freedoms gifted to those who qualify primarily include taking from others and keeping what they amass by any means regardless of harms inflicted.

Those living at the apex of a system built on the entangled ideas of “[Banned word] better have my money” and “Fuck you; got mine” find themselves perpetually paranoid about more rapacious people taking theirs and receiving plaudits for plundering. This places actual and striving oligarchs into a kind of prisoner’s dilemma, feeling compelled to repress, immiserate, and scoff at the enforceability of a social contract. How else to limit potential competitors?

Expansive, mutually beneficial, and inclusive conceptions of freedom must become preponderant. Ignore Thomas Jefferson whining about paying taxes and indigenous peoples receiving arms to fight off landgrabbers. Insist instead on no-tuition (i.e., “free”) high-quality education. Extoll the wonders of living free from preventable diseases and medical debt.

Talk at every opportunity about how no one lives and acts freely when members of disfavored groups find themselves restricted by discriminatory laws and policies. Racism, xenophobia, and homophobia/transphobia exact huge mental, moral, and economic tolls on bigots and victims. Whole books prove this this, but you can watch a video on just one aspect.

Arguing for an end to codified sex and gender hatred in particular points a rhetorical cannon at “religious liberty.” No torturing of a term has wreaked more havoc on civic and civil society. Uvular knows that the apocalyptic horseperson of oppression in the name of sincerely held moral beliefs long ago escaped the barn of legislating in the public’s interest. And that U.S. Supreme Court judges later burned down the horse farm. And also that Republican lawmakers now aver no place for penning horses ever existed.

Fine. But make individuals who place themselves on the wrong side of state or federal government public accommodations laws live there. Tell, for instance, a baker who refuses to sell wedding cakes to same-sex couples, “Baker, you cannot sell wedding cakes. You can sell other cakes. You can give away wedding cakes for free. But your bigotry precludes profiting from a particular pastry.” Religious liberty and equal access preserved. Easy.

In like fashion, require binding pledges from pharmacy school applicants to, once licensed, distribute contraceptives and abortifacients. Set and enforce the expectation that only individuals willing to perform basic professional duties receive training.

Achieving a Mime Meld

♬ Consequence you’ll see will be
Stranger than a gang of drunken mimes ♬

— “Consequence,” Incubus

Reframing public debate and recalibrating consensus understandings will not suffice. Repairs and reconstituion must happen. Equally essential, folks who, given their druthers, would add an inscription honoring bullets and bayonets to the Wounded Knee Massacre memorial must face consequences for acting on their society-destroying impulses.

Democratic members of Congress can get the ball rolling by abolishing the U.S. Senate filibuster. No longer permit an Hon. Chudson McMagat from Former Confederate State to block constructive, reparative legislation simply by expressing their disinclination to open debate on a bill. At a minimum, change the rules to require 60 votes to recognize, rather than end, a filibuster.

As soon as actually legislating becomes possible, break the U.S. Supreme Court. To hell with namby-pamby mewling about reform. Immediately and forever make it impossible for six radical rightwing activist justices to nullify, rewrite, or simply ignore federal laws and the plain text of the Constitution. Good governance cannot take hold while a lackwit’s lackeys act a legal cabal dedicated to the indefensible legal propositions that Trump (and to a lesser extent, Republicans) almost always wins while Democrats (and to a greater extent, anyone who aims for equality and fairness) consistently lose.

Jamelle Bouie and Josh Marshall offer productive ideas for stopping a corrupt, unjust, antidemocratic, and overreaching Court from serving as a usurping uber Congress. Suggestions include significantly expanding the number of justices, picking justices for fixed terms instead of life, tearing down the Court building, and assigning justices to cases by blind draw as occurs at the appellate level.

Congress must also explicitly define justiciability in the text of laws, no longer seat judges who perjure themselves during nomination hearings, and impeach, convict, remove, and refer for criminal prosecution justices who take bribes.

Related to ending the reign of error by SCOTUS justices playing legal Calvinball, everyone from fellow legislators and lower court judges to reporters and voters must refuse to meet Republicans’ bad faith with good faith. Do not treat legal arguments and policy analyses propounded by groups such as the Federalist Society and Heritage Society as valid. Do start treating every accusation of wrongdoing levelled by a right-winger as a confession. Open cases on each GOPer who blathers on about stolen elections.

When properly philosophically predisposed and practically empowered to do so, pass laws and issue executive orders undoing pretty much everything done during the two Trump takeovers. Tear down illegally erected eyesores. Reenter international scientific and aid organizations. Invoke the monarchical powers illegimately imbued on the presidency to legitimate recently violated norms by codifying them as institutional rules with prescribed and nearly impossible to avoid punishments. Reassert small-d democratic control over the military by court-martialing and sending to Leavenworth every admiral, general, captain, and colonel who obeyed textbook illegal orders (see section 18.3.2.1) to murder unarmed small civilian boat crews in the Caribbean Sea and Eastern Pacific Ocean.

None of that happens until Democrats who have the will to act first secure solid majorities in both chambers of Congress and then win back the White House. Vote for democratic socialists and progressives in primaries and general elections. Pressure Democrats already in office to do more than express Susan Collins-type concern.

Looking past SCOTUS and the government as an entity, America needs something akin to a de-Nazification. Empanel a truth and reconciliation commission to place in the public record all the misdeeds and outright crimes of Trump family members, Trump administration officials, and MAGA politicians. Criminally charge hundreds of political appointees and special advisers. Most particularly, ensure genocidaire extraordinaire Elon Musk pays compensation to victims’ families and spends the second half of his miserable life in prison for personally engineering the deaths of millions by shuttering USAID.

Do not doubt that FBI agents and other law enforcement officials will serve notice on, investigate, and detain right-wingers. Of all things, “ACAB” applies equally. Correctly use federal police as point-and-shoot bastards in need of nothing but targets.

Before stumbling across the “consequences like drunken mimes” lyric, Uvular drafted this concluding section around the Too Much Joy couplet “To create / You must destroy.” [Click to hear your WPT header author bellowing the chorus at the end of the official live recording.]

Recognize that the America many celebrated for 249 years never existed. In contrast to the mental space accorded Myth America stood—stands—an all-too-real country that some who rise to positions of authority would love to turn into a fascist and theocratic ethnostate. TMJ named their publishing company People Suck Music for the very good reason that too many people suck. But not everyone. And not any individual one hundred percent of the time.

While only iPhones and air conditioning seem to separate Know Nothings of 1856 from MAGAs of 2026, destroying the power of the ill-intended and creating a better America than ever seen can happen. Let’s do that.

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