Opinion by
Columnist
July 4, 2021 at 7:00 a.m. EDT
There are many things for which to be thankful on this Fourth of July, chief among them the fact that it will not be celebrated with a president in the White House who, for four years and with shameless narcissism, used the most pivotal date in U.S. history to draw attention to himself.
Donald Trump struck bottom last year when, with nearly 130,000 people dead and hundreds of thousands more sickened in the coronavirus pandemic that was spreading like wildfire across the country, he staged an elaborate event on the White House lawn for a largely maskless crowd, delivering an inflammatory speech, backdropped by a huge Mall fireworks display and flyovers by the Navy’s Blue Angels and the Air Force’s Thunderbirds.
Independence Day 2021 is an apt occasion to celebrate America’s liberation from Trump.
Today also marks the first Fourth of July to occur after the Trump-inspired Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. To think of the former president’s self-designated “patriots” storming that majestic symbol of U.S. sovereignty and freedom to satisfy his lust for power is to imagine something King George III himself might have ordered.
After all, it was a vain King George who, as Trump would centuries later, urged his forces to stay firm in their efforts to put down the opposition.
And it was King George who, like Trump, remained uncompromising in his refusal to accept defeat. The king left American soil scattered with the broken bodies of his Tories. Trump is leaving the country’s court dockets and jails packed with his right-wing rioters.
King George III and Donald Trump will be remembered on this Independence Day, and for many U.S. birthdays in the future, as an autocrat and would-be autocrat who flung daggers at the heart of our nation and, thanks be to God, missed.
Both missed their mark because they never really understood what could make disorganized handfuls of working men and boys (in King George’s day) or handfuls of outnumbered Capitol Hill and D.C. police (in Trump’s last days in the White House) leave homes and families to confront forces that threatened liberty.
George and Trump never fathomed the capacity of people who would stand up for something larger than themselves.
It is that spirit that sparked 1776. It was that same spirit that spurred courageous efforts to stem the flood of Trump insurrectionists who streamed through broken windows and crushed doors to stop Congress from fulfilling a constitutional duty.
Thirteen years ago in Independence, Mo., a young U.S. senator from Illinois running for president spoke about the Revolutionary War that started on a spring morning in April 1775. He talked about the risks taken by the “simple band of colonists” when they took up arms against an empire. The chances were taken, he said, on behalf of a larger idea: liberty, and the notion of God-given, inalienable rights.
Said then-Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) on the eve of Independence Day: “That is the liberty we defend — the liberty of each of us to pursue our own dreams. That is the equality we seek — not an equality of results, but the chance of every single one of us to make it if we try.” He spoke of the ongoing need to build an American community “in which we trust in this sometimes messy democracy of ours.”
It is a liberty that neither King George nor the wannabe king, Donald Trump, could have ever understood.
A liberty born of a strange kind of patriotism.
“In the end” said Obama, “it may be this quality that best describes patriotism in my mind — not just a love of America in the abstract, but a very particular love for, and faith in, the American people. That is why our heart swells with pride at the sight of our flag; why we shed a tear as the lonely notes of Taps sound. For we know that the greatness of this country — its victories in war, its enormous wealth, its scientific and cultural achievements — all result from the energy and imagination of the American people; their toil, drive, struggle, restlessness, humor and quiet heroism.
“That is the liberty we defend.”
The future president declared that we are part of a larger story, “our own fates wrapped up in the fates of those who share allegiance to America’s happy and singular creed.” A story disbelieved by forces of insurrection.
But Barack Obama spoke truths on the nation’s birthday in 2008. Those truths are alive on this Independence Day, too.
When They Go Down-We Go Up-Rise Up 