Thinking About Things: The Present Ambiguity of July 4th, the Rise of China as the CCP Hits 100, the Decline of the United States as a Serious Power, and the Politics of Everything.

By John DeQ Briggs

At the confluence of the 245th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and the 100th anniversary of the establishment of the Chinese Communist Party we seem to be living under the ancient Chinese curse: May you live in interesting times. Who would have thought that half of the population of the United States would now be viewing the July 4 holiday as a holiday not to celebrate, but to be embarrassed about.  The Founding Fathers and everybody associated with them have been condemned by much of the country, not just in academia but in the halls of government too, as white racists or worse.

Government buildings, especially the US capital’s Rotunda, are candidates for being emptied of their portraits, their statues, and their busts.  The Founding Fathers are increasingly persona non grata in public spaces, to be replaced by new aacceptable symbols of current progressive ideology that would turn all public spaces into “safe spaces” monitored by a supposedly benign government much in the way that preschool classes are monitored by supposedly benign teachers.  Our students are increasingly taught to be ashamed of their country and its founders and, similarly, ashamed of their own whiteness.  Like homosexuality decades ago, whiteness is now like a disease to be treated. Schools and employers are the re-education camps of our time. 

And so in the frenzy of shame, apology, and embarassment for our past, we have become a country that no longer has any discernable, coherent, articulated or pursued national interest; no immigration policy; no policies to manage  the nation’s violent urban slaughter beyond “defunding the police” and blaming centuries of white supremacy; and indeed no national policies other than to be for racal equity and social justice and too be aginst against white racisim and  climate change – even nature itself – as if our population of 350 million souls could address the human contribution to climate change by the the other 7.5 billion souls who occupy planet earth.  

Sadly, we are country in swift and steep decline:  unserious,  intellectually and physically flabby, self-indulgent.  Politically, we are pandering to progressivism in its current incarnation.  In order to invest in “infrastructure” (defined as whatever the left wants, including social justice, racial equity and reparations for slavery)  our Federal Government makes no secret of its intent  to transfer trillions of dollars of wealth  from the largely old and white segments of the population to the relatively young and POC segments of the population. 

Meanwhile, on the other side of the earth, there is the Peoples Republic of China.  China is ascendant, focused and purposeful.  It has the largest population of any planet on earth; the largest Navy; the largest military; an economy that is only $6.2 trillion less than the American GDP and poised soon to become the largest economy in the worldd (and the largest polluter too).  Somewhat more surprisingly to American sensibilities, while China is an autocracy, indeed a dictatorship, it is in many day-to-day ways more “free” than the United States.  

Putting aside political expression, especially political expression hostile to government views, the Chinese people can do pretty much as they please.  They can travel overseas; be educated overseas; purchase the same goods as are available in the West; and so on.  And notwithstanding China’s total subjugation of Hong Kong (which was basically wholly free just a year ago) and other egional bullying and atrocities, their populace does not seem to suffer the societal divisions that plague, indeed define, the United States today. In China one does not see homelessness or opiod/drug addiction on a massive scale; the Chinese border is secure such that  those crossing it unlawfully are in jail or deported within hours.  Yet remarkably, many or most Chinese expatriates, whether temporary or permanent, seem to maintain a strong respect and affection for their country and their Chineseness.  They tend in general not to be critical of the country even when to do so would be completely unthreatening to them.  They are proud of the military, political, and economic strength of their homeland on the world stage.  They are unapologetic about their country and its leaders, notwithstanding the murderous bloodshed  of Mao Tse Tung in the 1930’s and 1940’s so thoroughly documented  by Jung Cheng in her published masterpieces  Mao and Five Swans.  

Whether for want of a decent education or otherwise, today’s mainstream journalists and other members of the commentariat in this country seem to have lost sight of the visionary radicalism of the Declaration of Independence.  To be sure, it contains a certain  amount of hypocrisy.  Its shining statement that 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, and that among those are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness did not include slaves (although it probably did include women, as the term “Men” in the document was generally understood to include all genders).  Today, of course even the use of the word men or women is controversial.  The Declaration of Independence is even more astonishing in its radicalism considering what the world was elsewhere like in the late 18^th century. There were no reublics or democracies.  Moreover, the document was created and adopted through negotiation, collaboration, and compromise and  embraced by the Continental Congress unanimously.  These men incepted the greatest explosion of freedom in human history, birthing almost immediately the French Revolution for example. And the ringing last sentence of the Declaration stated: And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm Reliance on the Protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledged to each other  our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.  It is, quite frankly, impossible to imagine any elected officials expressing such a sentiment today, much less partisans of all factions doing so.

We have often been told how fragile our unique our Republic might be.  Now we see it in disrepair.  Who would have thought that the murder of George Floyd by Officer Cauvin in Minneapolis during the summer of 2020 would be the pivot point that would cause the legacy of the founders of this country to become so disrespected, indeed mauled.  Massive segments of the country are now acting as if the legacy of the founders is a poison chalice, an idea that follows a fairly short but straight line from Critical Race Theory to the 1619 project, to the BLM movement and all of its negative nuances.  Last week, during the run-up to the July 4 weekend, newspapers nationwide carried stories about the divisiveness of the American flag.  It has become associated with the current  Republicans,  who in turn have become associated with racists and Nazis.  A farmer in deep blue New York with a large produce truck painted on one side as an American flag found that his business collapsed — until he advertised that he was a Democrat and a liberal.

Consider a recent poll: 99% of self-described Democrats believe that the Covid-19 pandemic is not over.  52% of self-described Republicans believe that it is over.  A different poll finds that some 75% of Republicans believe that the 2020 election was marred by massive fraud whereas roughly 99% of Democrats believe that there was no fraud associated with the 2020 election. We have become a tribal country and each tribe has beliefs that are more faith-based than fact-based. One evidently cannot be a Democrat  and express a belief that the pandemic is over.  As a result, wearing a mask is a political signal and symbol.  Not wearing a mask likewise.  One cannot be a Republican and express the view that the 2020 election was not tainted by fraud.  The facts of the matter don’t really come into play anymore.  Our tribes “celebrate” July 4 now in an entirely different ways.  For progressives and the left, the July 4 holiday is becoming more like an anti-Ameerican teach-in of the sort that was so prevalent during the Vietnam war.  For many conservatives, the July 4 celebration is a celebration of like-minded partisans.

Not only have we become an unserious tribal or factionalized country, but our political parties through their favored media conduits (MSNBC on the left and Fox on the right) announce every hour of every day that we are in a state of permanent emergency or permanent crisis in this country.  This ongoing and never-ending state of emergency justifies any and all curative political measures  and it justifies a determination not to compromise in any quarter.  Yet as a podcast I listened to last week noted, if one turns off the news and generally ignores the media, and if one opens the window or walks around outside, one hears birds chirping and dogs playing; one smells freshly cut grass; and one feels gentle sea breezes coming off the Chesapeake Bay, or one of its many tributaries.  If we did not live in a politically dysfunctional country, this would be a pretty nice place.