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The Great American Disconnect
The 250th anniversary of the birth of the United States should be something to celebrate. In 2026, that's not possible.
Greetings from Madrid! Here is the Friday ramble.
And here is a transcript, edited for clarity:
Good morning. As you’re watching this, it’s Friday morning, July third. I’m recording it at 5:30 in the afternoon on Thursday, July second. That’s 5:30 in the afternoon Madrid time, because that’s where I am: in a hotel room here in the center of town, in Madrid, Spain—a country that this week told Alex Karp and Palantir to fuck off.
I have thoughts about what’s going to happen tomorrow, which is the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. It’s also the 39th anniversary of Donald Trump’s first visit to Moscow in 1987 (if I’m doing the math right). And it’s the eight-year anniversary of that time that those Republican lawmakers all went to Moscow on the Fourth of July—a group that included Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, John Kennedy of Louisiana, and the guy that’s now the Senate Majority Leader, John Thune. All those guys were celebrating the Fourth of July in Moscow with the Russians, as one does.
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There’s a lot of hullabaloo about the 250th, the semiquincentennial. Trump is trying to make it into a thing. It’s a miserable failure. No one is there. The shots of the Great American State Fair he’s having on the on the Mall in D.C. are embarrassing. I mean, I’ve played bigger events than that. At certain key points, there were more people on stage than there were in the audience.
Tomorrow, on the actual Fourth of July, Donald Trump plans to give a long speech. That’s what he promised to do. Not that he ever, you know, welches on his promises, Lord knows, but it’s going to be 107 degrees in Washington—and it’s going to be humid as fuck because that’s what happens in D.C. in the malarial summertime. So we’ll see. We’ll see how long his speech goes on for, and if he can tough it out like he said he was going to do.
So there’s a lot: there’s the business with the reflecting pool, and he wants to build this arch—there’s a scale model of the arch that’s made of, I guess, caulk and wallpaper that’s starting to come apart on the Mall—and all these other things where he’s diverting money that’s supposed to go to the National Parks and using it to buy gold paint to spruce up the statues in D.C., all to celebrate or honor or commemorate or whatever the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States.
And he wants it to be celebratory. That’s what Trump wants. That’s what the Republicans want: for us to celebrate this as if it’s a birthday—and not something else. But just a gander at the news, at the headlines, and…you know, it’s so easy to get wrapped up in the moment and in the anger of the moment, the rage that you feel reading this headline or that headline or whatever it is. There’s so much. But we have to pause and reflect here.
Today, as I’m recording this on Thursday, the Russians, who have been at war with Ukraine for years now, launched another big attack on Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine—blowing up apartment buildings, like the Russians do. And just the juxtaposition of that, with Trump blundering on about the 250th—it’s just it’s so jarring to me. Because the United States should never have allowed that to happen. We should never have allowed it to happen.
The Russians have been our enemies basically since 1945; nothing has changed that. We like to pretend that they’re not, but they’re our adversary. They’ve been that way for a long, long time. And we had an opportunity with this Ukraine war and this dunderheaded invasion that Putin ordered and thought would be over in three days; it’s gone on for years.
The average life expectancy of a Russian conscript into the military is something like nine months now. Not good. I mean, Putin is just butchering his own people. And the Ukrainians have not only fought back valiantly, they’ve reinvented warfare on the fly. They’ve basically reimagined what 21st century warfare is, using the drones and all this other stuff, to a degree that’s really impressive and almost mind-boggling.
And all we had to do was give them more help. This isn’t just a Trump thing; Biden fucked it up, too. The West needed to give the Ukrainians as much help, as early as possible, to take these bastards down. Because they keep attacking everybody.
The Russians have been at war with us this whole time, and we don’t admit it. So for our adversary to attack a nation that is not only our ally, but somebody we’re by treaty bound to protect from Russia—because, you know, in the Budapest Memorandum, Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons in exchange for security guarantees. The United States was supposed to, by treaty, not allow Russia to do this. We’ve ignore the treaty, and we ignore what’s happening.
We, I guess, write it off as, “Well, he’s got nukes, what can we do?” As if Putin having nukes means we can just let him blunder into wherever he wants. I don’t think that Trump will order the military to help NATO if it comes to that. I really don’t. I don’t think the Europeans do, either.
So to celebrate anything right now? To celebrate what? It just feels so gross and unbecoming and tacky in every sense of the word. It’s like something JD Vance would do on the regular.
Speaking of Vance, I mean, that’s another thing. We’ve got Peter Thiel with his little secret societies, and Elon Musk wanting to kill all these people and getting in arguments on Twitter about how “No, actually, he didn’t kill the people,” even though he clearly did. And by “the people” I mean the children, mostly in Africa who have died of starvation and other causes since he cut all the funding to USAID willy-nilly, because he’s a hateful racist Nazi moron. These are the people that we’ve entrusted our money to, that we bend over backwards to try to help, that we write tax policy around to protect. And then when we do have good leaders show up and emerge, like Zohran Mamdani has done in New York City—this movement, the New York Times calls a left-wing insurgency.
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Using the word insurgency, which actually means an insurrection—that’s what the word actually means… But it’s not an insurgency, it’s a movement. It’s a political movement of people that want a government that helps them. You know, that helps regular people, i.e., the 99 percent and not the one percent. I mean, this isn’t complicated stuff.
And the legacy media just goes all in trying to demonize them, and brings up Communism and socialism—trying to make these words into negative words, into pejoratives. It’s just disgusting. The whole thing is disgusting.
Also, I guess there’s some bill in Congress where now our military is going to basically be so embedded with the Israeli defense forces that it’s essentially the same thing. Which is a terrible idea. And which most people in the United States do not want. But we’re going to do it anyway, because the priorities of the governing class— the Epstein class, call them—do not align with what most people in the United States want.
Now, we can’t go back and look at the history of the country and pat ourselves on the back too much. I mean, it was a colony. We were brutal towards the Native Americans. People like to argue about what the word genocide actually means. But as I understand it, forcing people away from their land based on ethnicity, slaughter in the name of colonial imperialism—that’s all genocide. The United States practiced genocide to such a degree that Hitler copied it. Not good.
And, you know, the entire country was founded on slavery. Slave labor built the country. That’s just a fact. And we’ve never reconciled with that. We’ve never atoned for it. We’ve never even really acknowledged it.
So the idea that it’s been two hundred and fifty years of, you know, peace and brotherhood and equality and “All men are created equal”—that’s just not what it is anyway.
I’ve never really been able to understand how somebody as smart as Thomas Jefferson could write the Declaration of Independence, and I think sincerely believe what he was writing, while at the same time not only enslaving people, but raping them. There’s such a disconnect there. And maybe the disconnect is the thing. Maybe the whole thruline of the United States is one big disconnect between the myths that we tell ourselves and the reality that we’ve always lived in.
But decade by decade, we have gotten better. We have improved. We have made things better for people, for more people. We’ve expanded freedoms. That stopped when Trump came along, and it’s now on the wane, thanks to the Supreme Court, which is just…
You know, this birthright citizenship thing, the fact that that wasn’t a 9-0 decision is [struggles to find words] disappointing? Preposterous? I’ve long ago stopped trying to find logic in anything these assholes write. They’re just fascists that are gonna do what their overlords want them to do. I understand that. None of it makes sense. They’re trolling us—making us try to struggle with ways to explain the logic of their decisions.
But birthright citizenship is so clearly delineated in the 14th Amendment, which has been there since, what, 1868, I think? Like, that’s the fucking law, man. You can’t just change it because that’s what Donald wants and that’s what Clarence Thomas wants for some reason. That’s not how it works.
So all of this is just a disconnect between what America thinks it is and what it actually is. And there’s always been a disconnect. But right now, in some sense, you know the curtain has come down or rather fallen away, I should say, and the lights have come on, and we’re being exposed for what we are. Because Trump isn’t somebody that you can just ignore the bad stuff that he’s doing and getting away with. Like, maybe you could do it when Ronald Reagan did shady shit to help the oligarchs, or when Nixon did, or McKinley or whoever. But this is a whole new level.
And people know more now, or should know. I get that FoxNews spreads its malicious garbage. I understand that. But, like, the internet’s been around for a long time. There’s lots of different viewpoints out there that people can go look up, for free, pretty easily. And to not do that is a choice. I do it. I have my views, but I always am open to what other people who disagree with me think. I’m more interested in hearing from people that disagree with me than from people who agree with me. Because I already know what I know, what I believe. I want to hear why I shouldn’t believe it. And if people in this country are too lazy or brainwashed or hateful or dumb—take your pick—to do that? That’s ultimately on them. It’s not on the media. It’s not on the GOP. It’s on them. It’s on the individuals.
So, yeah, July Fourth, 2026 is the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. But I don’t think it’s an anniversary that we can celebrate. It’s not a birthday. It’s not a celebration. It’s a funeral. It really is.
Now, a country isn’t like a person. A country can come back to life. But right now, as it stands, any kind of celebration at all is just in very bad taste. I don’t think there should be fireworks. I don’t think we should do anything. It should be a day of mourning, if you ask me. And, I mean, I’m not gonna be in the United States for the Fourth of July, and I’m glad. I’m glad I’m not going to be there for it because there’s nothing to celebrate. There’s nothing to celebrate. There’s nothing worth setting off fireworks about, you know?
It’s a big disconnect. We’re swirling the drain. There’s still time to stop it, for sure. We have good people doing good things. We have movement and momentum in the opposition party, the real opposition party, which is the Mamdani wing of the Democratic Party, the AOC wing of the Democratic Party, and not the Schumer/ Jeffries/ Cory-Booker-going-to-Peter-Thiel’s-secret-meeting wing, the legacy wing of the Democratic Party. That to me just feels like controlled opposition. I don’t know if it really is, but if it were controlled opposition, it wouldn’t be doing anything any differently than what these people have been doing.
So we know what to do. I think most people know the difference between right and wrong. I think most Americans are proud of the good things about America. And there’s a lot of very good things about America, starting with our diversity, which only exists because of immigration—another thing, these mouth-breathing FoxNews-obsessed morons can’t grok. That’s what makes the country great. It’s the diversity. It’s really that simple. Because diversity brings in different viewpoints, different ideas, different innovations. That’s what has kept America on top of everything.
And we are now actively attempting to destroy that. We’re spending a fuck-ton of money, $79 billion, on ICE and these concentration camps and all this other crap to try to stop immigration. It just makes me sad. It makes me sad because we had a good thing and we fucked it up.
And I hope that on the two hundred and fifty-first anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, we’re in a better place. The midterms will have happened, and maybe we’re on the way to impeaching everybody and getting some kind of accountability in there, where people who committed these crimes face real consequences for them.
But until we do that, there’s nothing to celebrate. There’s nothing to celebrate. It’s not a celebration. It’s a funeral. And I hate to feel that way, but that’s how I feel. So again, I don’t want to bring everybody down, but the idea that anybody’s gonna go out there and whoop and holler about “U-S-A” is disgusting to me right now. Particularly right now, particularly this week. It’s just disgusting.
I think people should wear black. I think people should not do the fireworks at all. And, you know, that’s what we should do. We should we should observe it like it’s a funeral. And maybe, we’ll get lucky, and maybe the hopeful people that are doing the good work will show us the way and lead us out of this mess.
I like to think that. And deep down I will always believe it.
I will always believe that we shall prevail.
TONIGHT
We won’t be live tonight, but there will be a show starting at 8pm ET with brand new content, including my full discussion with Arthur Snell. Here is the link:
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