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Foreclosure rate at seven-year high in former US, driven mainly by Trumpvilles in South and Midwest. {MortgagePoint 7 July}
πͺπ #QueSeraSera π ¨ π
Copyright 2026, Arthur Newhook.
Wednesday, July 8, 2026
Echoes of 2008
Foreclosure rate at seven-year high in former US, driven mainly by Trumpvilles in South and Midwest. {MortgagePoint 7 July}
Among the faithful dead in the last refuge of civilisation
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Literacy crisis: Americans today are outright refusing to read; gambling now more common than books in the former US. {Rose Horowitch, The Atlantic 8 July}
A new Dark Ages is taking shape, and that is not hyperbole but probably an understatement. Consider this anecdote, FTA:
Adult-literacy scores have also dropped: Nearly 30 percent of American adults cannot paraphrase or make inferences from a multipage text. In 2017, that number was less than 20 percent.
That is a staggering decline in less than a decade. Nine years is not even a blip in the course of modern civilisation. The figure is so extraordinary that I can scarcely wrap my mind around it, so I shall not attempt to do so any further at the moment.
The scariest part of the decline in reading for pleasure is that it is being witnessed across all demographics. The youngest generations are the least inclined to read and the most tech-addled, as one might expect, but only an estimated 38 per cent of Americans read a novel last year. Is it any coincidence that this is occurring at the same time anti-intellectualism is running amok and a narcissistic clown has returned to the White House after failing spectacularly the first time around?
Decades of vapid popular culture, political gaslighting that convinced people to oppose their own interests, and immersion in technologies designed to fragment attention have combined to produce a society that no longer practises critical thinking. A kind of mass zombification is underway, and I want out of this timeline and away from everyone in it. It is not the sort of life I wish to live, nor the sort of society in which I wish to live. #Murica.
FTA: Reading books is a workout for the attention span. The more you read, the easier it is to read, and the more you’re rewarded with new understanding. Eventually the process is more pleasurable than it is challenging. But as with physical exercise, the converse is true as well: The less you read, the more difficult it is to read, and the rockier the path to acquiring knowledge.
πͺπ #QueSeraSera π ¨ π
Copyright 2026, Arthur Newhook.
The threat heard round the living room: business as usual in Madrid
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Trump lashes out at Spain during NATO summit and threatens trade relations (never mind that US–Spanish trade is conducted through the EU, as is the case for all EU member states); PM SΓ‘nchez's office responds with a shrug: ‘Business as usual’. {The Hill, 8 July}
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5958540-donald-trump-us-spain-trade/
What is with Donald Trump's obsession with how much individual NATO member states contribute? The (now-former) United States hath always been the alliance's largest and most powerful member, and from those who have much, much is expected, as the old proverb goes. America contributes the most because it possesses the most to give militarily, and by a considerable margin — though how long that remains true once this regime finishes decimating the Pentagon and Armed Services remains to be seen.
Prior to Trump, it was scarcely controversial that the US served as NATO's lynchpin, precisely because small European states lack the resources to defend themselves alone against the alliance's principal adversary: Mother Russia. And there lies the answer to why Trump works so relentlessly to undermine NATO. This is not rocket science, yet many refuse to say it aloud, dismiss those who do as conspiracy theorists, or simply cannot bring themselves to believe it. After all this time, the possibility remains unthinkable to them: that he is Putin's puppet (or the puppet of any number of foreign and domestic adversaries) and is actively working to weaken the United States from within.
The signs have been there for a decade — from the 2016 election, Cambridge Analytica, and the propaganda mills of St Petersburg, to the investigation conducted by Robert Mueller (RIP). Have we forgotten already? Apparently so, for here we are in bloody 2026, still cursed with this unholy bastard dominating our national life, the entire country revolving around his fragile ego while the self-proclaimed tough guys around us deride anyone who objects as a ‘snowflake’ or worse, and ninety per cent of the Christians tell us Jesus will send us to pits of Hades if we reject him.
As stated, however, once the Trump regime finishes dismantling America's armed forces, this endless argument over who is paying enough in global defence and who is not will become entirely moot.
πͺπ #QueSeraSera π ¨ π
Copyright 2026, Arthur Newhook.
No one thought the fire would reach them
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Ukraine drone strike halts Russia's largest Omsk refinery, hitting key fuel producer and worsening shortages. {Kyiv Post 8 July}
https://www.kyivpost.com/post/79829
πͺπ #QueSeraSera π ¨ π
Copyright 2026, Arthur Newhook.
The lovers of Kalocsa
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Hungary halts public news broadcasts to scrap OrbΓ‘n-era propaganda, promising independent and trustworthy media. {BBC 7 July}
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgevwq1pndgo
“Public media should not lie. We are sorry for doing it for so long.” Words we shall never hear from any American broadcaster.
πͺπ #QueSeraSera π ¨ π
Copyright 2026, Arthur Newhook.
Tuesday, July 7, 2026
Mistresses of the chokepoint
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Crude oil prices begin to rise once more with the renewal of combat in the Strait of Hormuz. {MarketWatch 7 July}
πͺπ #QueSeraSera π ¨ π
Copyright 2026, Arthur Newhook.
The long night of Hormuz
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Trumpistan and Iran fire at each other again in the Strait of Hormuz: another failed ceasefire (and how many is this now?) {AP 7 July}
When is anyone ever going to get it? The Iranians are never going to abide by the terms of a peace deal. America hath two options, and neither is good: either withdraw completely from the region, thereby leaving Israel and the Gulf states vulnerable while further emboldening powers such as Russia and China; or commit to a full-scale war aimed at the all-out, genuine (meaning not half-assed) destruction of the Islamic Republic, risking World War III. The global economy hath already taken a major hit, and gas prices are not going down, are they? What a bloody mess — one that is going to take decades to recover from, assuming recovery is even possible.
πͺπ #QueSeraSera π ¨ π
Copyright 2026, Arthur Newhook.
No favour could save them
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| Getty Images |
Trump, always quick to boast and even quicker to complain, is curiously silent after the former US is drubbed out of the World Cup, despite having first been granted a special favour at his insistence and with the acquiescence of FIFA boss Infantino. {The Sun 7 July}
https://www.the-sun.com/sport/16649921/trump-ignores-usas-world-cup-hammering/
πͺπ #QueSeraSera π ¨ π
Copyright 2026, Arthur Newhook.
Where mercy met exhaustion
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| generated via Gemini |
Africa: Ebola deaths top 500. {AP 6 July}
πͺπ #QueSeraSera π ¨ π
Copyright 2026, Arthur Newhook.
Monday, July 6, 2026
Waiting for new horizons
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Air Canada cuts more US flights amid high jet fuel costs and falling Canadian demand for travel. {Canadian Press 6 July}
https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/air-canada-halts-some-us-routes-9.7260269
πͺπ #QueSeraSera π ¨ π
Copyright 2026, Arthur Newhook.
Their fortune, her prison
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The notorious Tate brothers — celebrated by young men all over the world, but especially in Trump’s #Murica — ‘made more than £1m from prostituting a teenager through their webcam sex business’. {The Telegraph 6 July}
πͺπ #QueSeraSera π ¨ π
Copyright 2026, Arthur Newhook.
Liberty’s fall on the rocky cliffs of Maine
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Maine Democratic Party calls on Graham Platner to drop out of US Senate race after sexual assault allegations emerge. {Maine Morning Star 6 July}
Do not be so confident the Democratic Party is going to win anything in November. Between backing a clearly unstable and dangerous candidate in Platner, candidates moving further left and alienating a centre-right nation, and successful GOP gerrymandering efforts in key states, it is not looking as though the GOP becoming nothing more than a personality cult — a gaggle of sycophants to Trump — is going to dissuade average voters from leaning Republican, because the alternative is just that much worse to them. I do not personally believe the Democrats are worse — not after ten years of Republicans making fools of themselves, appeasing Trump and his white trash voter base, and adopting neo-fascism as their guiding ideology — but are they any good? They stabbed President Joe Biden in the back, and in doing so allowed Donald Trump to return to office, and these are the consequences of such treachery. The Republicans are clearly aiming toward an eventual one-party state, and the Democrats just keep shooting themselves in the foot. A viable centrist third party should have come along about a decade ago, but it is too late. Into the abyss we go.
πͺπ #QueSeraSera π ¨ π
Copyright 2026, Arthur Newhook.
Where the grid ends and fate begins
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The entirety of the island nation of Cuba was, again, left without electricity on Monday. {Reuters 6 July}
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/cuba-island-wide-power-outage-9.7260307
Look into it, in many areas America is not quite so far ahead of Cuba in infrastructure upkeep, and the ageing grids that power this country are now being expected to take on far more stress with all the data centres opening up everywhere. It varies from region to region, and obviously we are vastly larger than Cuba — but that only means we shall fall harder. In the race to the bottom, we are not as far behind as we would love to believe.
πͺπ #QueSeraSera π ¨ π
Copyright 2026, Arthur Newhook.
The great #Murican pout at the World Cup
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FIFA succumbs to Trump pressure, will allow suspended US star to play Monday night. {ESPN 6 July}
FIFA's decision to suspend Folarin Balogun's automatic red-card ban after intervention from President Trump hath provoked outrage across the sporting world, with UEFA describing the move as ‘unprecedented, incomprehensible and unjustifiable’, whilst Belgian officials have questioned the integrity of the tournament itself.
How can anyone be blamed for being furious?
The issue is no longer whether Balogun deserved the red card. Reasonable people can disagree on that. The problem is the appearance that the host nation's star player was granted relief after the President of the United States personally sought a review from FIFA's leadership. Trump has publicly acknowledged contacting FIFA President Gianni Infantino, and FIFA subsequently lifted the suspension using a rarely-invoked disciplinary provision. Critics across Europe have argued that the decision creates the perception that one nation is playing by a different set of rules from everyone else — and I believe it is more than mere perception.
Should America somehow advance to the World Cup Final and lift the trophy — already unlikely, but even more so without Balogun — this controversy will not simply disappear and their win shall be tainted. An asterisk will forever be attached to that achievement. The Americans would be confronted by a question that no champion should ever have to answer: did they prevail because they were the best team, or because political influence succeeded where sporting merit alone could not? For a nation that once championed the rule of law and equal treatment — however imperfectly — that is a humiliating question even to have to answer.
I believe this country hath a collective humiliation kink now. No other way to explain bringing this corrupt tyrant back to office. One who hath continually humiliated America and its people on the world stage for years, and the people just spread 'em wider for him.
πͺπ #QueSeraSera π ¨ π
Copyright 2026, Arthur Newhook.
The return of an old scourge and the lessons we forgot
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Measles returns with a vengeance in the former US, 25 years after ‘elimination’, forcing doctors to relearn how to combat it. {Washington Post 6 July}
Entirely shameful, and entirely preventable. Religious freedom should not mean religious supremacy. As was demonstrated very clearly during the COVID pandemic, these anti-vaxxers and assorted types chanting muh freedumb do not believe in the freedom of others to be protected from them and their bloody germs. Liberty to them is the liberty to impose themselves on others. They are the types who blast obnoxious music at all hours of the day, and become offended when asked to stop and shout ‘it’s a free country!’ They have been the types, throughout my thankless life, who have hassled me at every turn when my aching psyche just wants everything around me to slow the hell down and quiet down. Respect for others is tyranny to these people, and all too many of them out there.
Hell, most Americans — and not even merely the anti-vaxxers and Christofascists — could not even handle the simple concept of social distancing. They would be miserable living in Germany, where quiet on Sundays is simply a societal custom that doth not need enforcing by law; it is just respected by nearly all people.
Call me insane, in what we are still told is the most prosperous and educated nation on earth — obviously less and less true with each passing year, but stay with me — for expecting to be able to step outside and be reasonably certain I am not going to contract a deadly disease on any given day. Diagnose me with 'TDS' if some simple civility and respect for others is infringing upon the individual ‘rights’ of lunatics, bullies, religious zealots, and other assorted tyrants of society who make up the Trump/GOP base. Call me a bigot against people of faith — and I do consider myself a Christian, albeit a very poor and not particularly devout one, and my faith is not particularly strong at present — if the right of the general public to be protected against a scourge that was supposed to have been eliminated decades ago is less important than the feelings of bigamists, cultists, and all these assorted and dangerous weirdos who are only growing in number in this most horrific of timelines.
Somebody shoot me, I am so over all of this bulls**t.
πͺπ #QueSeraSera π ¨ π
Copyright 2026, Arthur Newhook.
The light we could not keep
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Survey: Trump voters sought protection from democracy itself — the heart of their choice. {Raw Story 5 July}
https://www.rawstory.com/abundance-democrats/
Perhaps for the entire history of this nation, it hath always been taken as an article of faith that the American people, whatever their given ideological bent, would forever live and die at the altar of democracy. In 21st century #Murica, however, it turns out democracy is not very popular anymore. To his perverse credit — though I hate using the word ‘credit’ even in a perverse context — Donald Trump saw this before anyone else, and capitalised. A decade later, there is almost no incentive for the GOP to be anything but an illiberal, far-right populist party, whilst at the same time a wave of illiberal hard-leftists stands poised to take over the Democratic Party. So, on both extremes — and the decided majority of Americans have drifted toward the extremes now, just look around — democracy is no longer enjoying great support with the rank-and-file. If somebody had shown me how this would play out twenty-five years ago, when democracy was still held as sacrosanct, I would have been stunned. In retrospect, it all makes sense: no matter how we advance technologically or otherwise, human beings by nature remain tribalistic creatures.
FTA: Lofgren then explained the study found 14 out of 21 participants responded negatively to a fundamental American value. He quoted a Wyoming woman named Sarah as telling researchers, "I don’t like the word democracy.”
"Let that sink in," the Salon writer urged. "It’s what many of us expected, but it’s still surprising to see it in print, given the almost phobic avoidance by major media, academia and think tanks of any discussion of whether Americans actually believe in the nation’s unofficial civic religion of democracy. It may also explain why ordinary, non-elite conservatives are untroubled by Donald Trump’s assertions that he would be “dictator on day one” or that he intended to 'terminate' parts of the Constitution. On the contrary, that’s what they want."
The study, Lofgren argued, found that what such Americans would prefer is protection of the beliefs they perceive as under attack by democracy itself.
πͺπ #QueSeraSera π ¨ π
Copyright 2026, Arthur Newhook.
Saturday, July 4, 2026
The Republic's Gethsemane
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Karma? “Donald Trump’s plans to celebrate the US’s 250th birthday with “the greatest show of all” in the heart of Washington DC were disrupted on a Saturday evening by fears of a thunderstorm.” {The Guardian 4 July}
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jul/04/trump-speech-dc-evacuation-thunderstorm
πͺπ #QueSeraSera π ¨ π
Copyright 2026, Arthur Newhook.
The nightingale’s daughter
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Ukraine launches another round of drone attacks on key military and oil infrastructure sites in and and around St. Petersburg. {ABC News 4 July}
πͺπ #QueSeraSera π ¨ π
Copyright 2026, Arthur Newhook.
Friday, July 3, 2026
America at the edge of night
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Properly angered Americans balk at being expected to ‘celebrate’ America 250 when it is glaring obvious ‘the experiment’ is over. {The Guardian 3 July}
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jul/03/250th-anniversary-readers-reflect
It is all over but the shouting, and the shouting has only just begun. One telling passage, FTA:
“What is there to celebrate? Who still deeply holds allegiance to this country? … We’ve pedestalized the absence of thought or empathy for the last 250 years, and I’m not optimistic enough to expect us to hit 500,” Callisto said. “We look ridiculous, sound inane, and act insane in the global theatre.”
I firmly disagree that we have been completely awful for the entirety of the nation's existence, for Americans have done some incredibly great things in this world over the long haul and have advanced humanity in a myriad of ways. We have also committed great evils, of course. All things considered, I grew up proud to be an American and had no doubt that we were living better than any nation in the world. That was in the 1980s and 1990s.
Today, however, it is obvious that we are no longer especially exceptional in terms of standard of living, and indeed are falling further behind. We are, in many respects, ridiculous, inane, and insane, like a rabid old dog that needs to be put down. Something fundamental began to change after the 9/11 attacks, and we are not the same country or people we were before that day. Nor are we ever getting back what we once had; the world hath changed and moved on.
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There is scant little left for America to export. Just look at how people are salivating at this moment over the marriage of a completely pedestrian, milquetoast pop singer and a retired, beefy football player who looks as though he would be working as a trashman or janitor were it not for sport. Not exactly Charles and Diana, is it? We are so bloody mediocre now that the culture itself feels exhausted. Look around: young people are listening to the same music their parents and grandparents did because there is precious little of value replacing it. Society is not quite dead, but it is running on fumes.
If this divide truly is irreparable — and I increasingly believe that it is — then the idea of a ‘national divorce’, typically advanced by the nationalist populists responsible for Trump, ought no longer be dismissed out of hand. At some point, all sides may be forced to confront the possibility that the United States has become less a nation than a collection of mutually hostile peoples sharing the same borders.
πͺπ #QueSeraSera π ¨ π
Copyright 2026, Arthur Newhook.
Flight of the White Eagle
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Trump's State Dept., playing 'good cop' to Putin's bad cop, warns Poland and NATO allies that they face an imminent Russian attack. {The Telegraph 3 July}
Russia is a highly wounded yet dangerous animal right now, ready to lash out in another direction, and Poland likely is in imminent danger. If the policy goal is to pressure Western governments into ceasing support for Ukraine, at a crucial moment when the Ukrainian forces hold a clear upper hand on the battlefield and Russian troops are dropping like flies, Putin and his puppet Trump are counting on simply launching missile attacks against European cities to achieve their ends. Trump hath made no secret of his desire that the former United States exit NATO. He and Putin are playing this cat-and-mouse game entirely to destroy an alliance that hath kept Mother Russia at bay for eighty years now. As such, NATO remains as vital today as it was during the Cold War. We have a word for what Trump and his collaborators are doing. It begins with the letter 't'. More of us had better start using it openly if any decency remains within this dying empire.
πͺπ #QueSeraSera π ¨ π
Copyright 2026, Arthur Newhook.
Tuesday, June 30, 2026
The Dallas ultimatum: Trump announces GOP mid-term convention, the cost of falling out of line — or, falling in line — to be great
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Trump announces first-ever GOP mid-term convention. {The Guardian 30 June}
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jun/30/trump-republican-convention-midterms-dallas
Get ready for the mother of all gaslighting campaigns. And it shall work. Guaranteed. I have said it before, and must say it again: it is the Democratic Party, not Trump and the GOP, that is the most hated faction in this nation. Of course, millions hate Trump and millions hate the Republicans, but not anywhere near in number or close in intensity to those who view the Democrats as mortal enemies. Hence, they shall not be satisfied until the enemy is completely wiped out. Then, they shall start turning on each other.
Trump's success has never been solely about Trump. It has always depended upon millions of Americans who either support him enthusiastically or repeatedly excuse conduct that would be unacceptable from anyone else. Abandon all hope, for this is what ‘y’all’ voted for, #Murica.
πͺπ #QueSeraSera π ¨ π
Copyright 2026, Arthur Newhook.
Loss looms larger
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Study finds the pain of losing typically outweighs the thrill of winning in individual decision-making. {StudyFinds 29 June}
https://studyfinds.com/losing-feels-worse-than-winning-feels-good-regret/
The old clichΓ©, "better safe than sorry," doth have some merit. Human beings are often more motivated to avoid loss than to pursue gain, and recent years have given Americans ample reason to be cautious — to put it mildly — about the future. That is not to say the public grasps the scale of the hell that awaits this crumbling nation — not even close — but I do believe the era of phony, Pollyannaish optimism is largely over in the former United States. Apart from intermittent gaslighting by Trump and his followers, of course. One moment they assure everyone that all is well; the next they revert to sky-is-falling rhetoric of their own. Such are the times in which we live.
πͺπ #QueSeraSera π ¨ π
Copyright 2026, Arthur Newhook.
Bread, circuses, and dust
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| generated via Gemini |
Attendees — few in number — of Trump’s Great American State Fair walk away disappointed: ‘unnecessarily vanilla’. {The Telegraph 30 June}
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/33867b19b0c835ee
One visitor was quoted, FTA: “It’s like reading a social studies textbook from the seventh grade. There’s so much vibrancy in the country, and this is unnecessarily vanilla. And there aren’t a lot of people here.”
The fair was marketed as a grand celebration of American history, culture, and achievement, yet the scant few who have bothered to attend describe something oddly lifeless and uninspired. Americans had better start getting it: Donald Trump is a career conman, dedicated to defrauding the general public and enriching himself. He makes grand promises, and then fails to deliver, consistently. Yet, here we are, ten years into this nightmare, and people still act surprised when they are sold a lemon, time and time again.
πͺπ #QueSeraSera π ¨ π
Copyright 2026, Arthur Newhook.
Monday, June 29, 2026
Queueing for collapse: Russia running on empty
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Russian citizens are now taking to fighting each other at petrol stations as the fuel crisis reaches epic proportions. {Metro 29 June}
They were sheltered to a large degree for a good portion of their nation’s war of aggression upon Ukraine, but ordinary Russians are feeling the effects of the war all around them now; particularly those fleeing Crimea, and Vladimir Putin is offering signs that he is feeling the heat from an increasingly restless public. Ukraine appears more resilient than ever, whilst Russia continues to bear the mounting, horrific costs of its war of aggression (approximately 1.4 million casualties; or about twenty-four to twenty-five times the number America lost in the Vietnam War). Yet the danger remains that a cornered Putin may resort to ever more reckless measures. What that could portend is simply unspeakable: will he take the world down with him?
We continue to pray for Ukraine as we did on the first day of this invasion — 24 February 2022, if we have forgotten how long it hath been now.
πͺπ #QueSeraSera π ¨ π
Copyright 2026, Arthur Newhook.
Trumpification of US flag complete; increasing numbers of ordinary Americans now see Old Glory, the 4th of July as ‘red flags’
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‘MAGA hat on a stick’: the Trumpification and partisan co-opting of the American flag and patriotic symbols is complete, as ordinary Americans say Old Glory is now ‘a red flag’. {NBC News 29 June}
Millions in the former United States say they will not celebrate the Fourth of July as poll reveals deep national pessimism. {The Independent 29 June}
The Reuters poll quoted in the second article reports that about one-in-five Americans do not intend to celebrate the Independence Day holiday this year, while two-in-five say the nation is not going to endure for another 250 years. I have to believe a further portion of those polled are only reluctantly celebrating out of habit and family obligation, are unsure if they are going to ‘celebrate’, or simply will not admit they are not celebrating. People do lie in polls; it is the exact reason why Trump — in each of the three presidential elections in which he hath been the GOP candidate, including his loss in 2020 — always outperformed them by at least a couple of percentage points.
Beyond the political realities, for a lot of people the Fourth of July hath always been an excuse to drink beer, stuff their mouths with hamburgers and hot dogs, and shoot off fireworks (do not even get me started on those). No matter, for the only people who are truly celebrating what this country is becoming under Donald Trump are the third or so of the overall population that worships him as a cult leader. Which is a hell of a lot of people, and the divide between them and the rest of us is growing wider by the hour. I rather resent having to live in these times and bear witness.
πͺπ #QueSeraSera π ¨ π
Copyright 2026, Arthur Newhook.
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