Dear Editor,
On July 4, 2026, America will celebrate its semiquincentennial or 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. Black Americans observed Juneteenth on June 19, 1865, commemorating that federal troops arrived in Galveston, Texas, to announce the end of slavery months after the war had actually ended and two years after the Emancipation Proclamation.
These two holidays together can make a powerful point about America’s current state of affairs. In 2024, Americans elected a “lesser of two evils” president who promised to “Make America great… again.” Americans weren’t so sure the first time around and were glad to be rid of Donald J Trump in 2020, but at least he hadn’t started wars. The 2020 race saw a sort of brotherhood of Democratic party players (President Barack Obama, Congressman Clyburn) maneuvering a struggling Joe Biden into nomination and preventing (for the second time) an “upstart” popular, elder and socialist Bernie Sanders from sweeping in as the Democratic nominee to take away votes from “true” Democrats. Those party leaders steadfastly cleared the path to monopolize their own worn-out messages, standing their ground at their own 2024 presidential convention to bar pro-Palestinian voices from having a two-minute turn to speak while Palestinians endured genocide under self-proclaimed Zionist President Biden.
A demented President Biden never thought to restrict a steady flow of US weapons to rain down on starving Palestinian families surviving in flimsy tents. Our proxy/ally/co-conspirator, Israel, excels in targeting and killing women and children, journalists along with their entire families (Where’s Daddy?) and completely flattening an Israeli “outdoor prison” of Palestinian Gaza after Palestinians’ October 7, 2023 “surprise” attack on Israel that very well have been engineered by Israeli leaders to allow to take place. Israeli leaders ignored warnings of their own watchguards that flying machines were being prepared on their border for attack while also allowing a music festival to be located near the “border.”
It so happens that Israel has very low threshold great tolerance for leaders engaging in corruption and taking bribes – – far stricter than America’s lenient constitutional emoluments clause allows. This matters, because as long as Israeli Leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, can claim that Israel is being attacked, he can avoid a judicial slam dunk prison sentence. And although Israelis despise Bibi, they love what he is doing.
Bibi’s dilemma rekindled Israel’s greater Israel project starting with an obvious Gaza genocide and continuing its long-held dream of obliterating the State of Iran—Israel’s main rival and obstacle to a Greater Israel project whose symbol is emblazoned on every Israeli Defense Fighter’s uniform. Since the “Greater Israel” project requires capture of the American Empire for nonstop wars, America became what its citizens are coming to believe is a failed democracy that fails to respond to its own citizens. America is functioning as a “slave” force for an entitled Israel—our partner-in-crime–an Israel who is liberated from any constraints of international law and has drawn our empire into its evil web, making both Israel and the US despised by the rest of the world. Affected countries are seeking new security partners and architecture as they gain confidence in gravitating toward stable and more principled China with a long-term plan.
Because Bibi wanted to stay out of prison with Trump’s continuing help, thousands died and are still dying in Lebanon for nothing. For reasons yet unacknowledged, Trump followed Israel to dismantle Iran whose main sin was escaping the clutches of America’s Empire long ago. In June 2025, President Trump named the Iran conflict the “12 Day War” declaring that Iran’s nuclear capability had been obliterated. Nevertheless, Trump’s appeasement of Bibi to prosecute “Epic Fury” cost Americans over $40 billion on extra gasoline and diesel plus inflation, $2 billion of military equipment, the cost of deploying troops in the Strait of Hormuz,16 troops dead, 400 wounded and substantial loss of standing around the world. Trump’s “Epic Fury” adding an estimated $1 trillion to our children’s credit bill sacrifices their future and seems at long last to have instigated citizens’ “epic fury” in Americans now so disgusted at the billionaire-controlled, forever war state we’ve become, that a new energy is rising to restore sanity, reality and justice to a system so warped that it is unrecognizable and has become a parody of governance. Leaders have become a fire hose of wasteful spending while Americans can’t even afford health insurance.
All this is not something to celebrate, but perhaps our semiquincentennial will be marked in history as the moment Americans realize that almost no one in our government has our backs and citizens mobilize. If we are to reclaim a semblance of democratic values, “We the people” must do it ourselves because our government is weaponized against us.
I approve the concept: “Make America Great,” but current leaders have made a mockery of that—especially now post-9/11, Americans polled a majority opposing a new war in Iran before it even started and now realize our entire leadership has gone horribly wrong with America’s disfunction spreading worldwide. Criminals are elevated and those exercising their rights are criminalized and imprisoned.
In every sense, it is a cruel perversion of the lofty founding American values: criminals and grifters are installed in government posts, pardoned for their deeds by our criminal-in-chief, who continues to be empowered by stooge US congressmen and whose overwhelming congressional majority follows orders of their AIPAC minders to ensure that Congress gives Israel everything it demands despite it not being in America’s interest.
In our semiquincentennial, we wait for decades for our own liberation yet to deliver us from a corrupt, arguably fascist takeover of our current government where all must be in adulation of the leader. Sycophants surrounding Trump play along instead of sounding the alarm. Trump is surrounded by Israeli agents and Zionists. Now, when he must craft peace with Iran, Trump’s own life may be in danger from Israeli infiltrators close to him. After all, Bibi gifted him a golden “pager” carrying an implied threat. JD Vance—veering from being a convinced Zionist—struggles to clean up Trump’s mother-of-all-war-messes to salvage the situation. But neocons are all coming out to skuttle Trump’s MOU deal.
We Americans have a job to do because a substantial minority and Congressional Republicans succumb to Trump threats and being primaried. This includes our own Ben Cline who “stands squarely with Trump.” Cline must be devoting valuable time standing next to a president waffling constantly doing a 180 from nearly every one of his campaign promises that got him elected. At least Trump, after trying everything against Iran, recognizes he must submit to Iran’s demands and newfound strategic strength as America’s strategic oil supply empties in less than a month.
So, celebrate or lament, but get energized to recommit America to a real democracy that represents people—not a class of billionaires with values so unjust and warped, that the Collective West is a laughing stock of the world if it weren’t so tragic and deadly for those in its path. We Americans must now unite to avoid a civil war and save our Social Security. Like the slaves in Galvaston, we await news of our liberation from billionaire, Zionist and Epstein class masters.
-Cynthia Munley
Salem
