The Friday Brief

July 5, 2024

The Big Picture

The Last July 4th

We spent a quiet July 4th yesterday. I suspect it’s our last in the America we know, for a number of reasons.

There’s a good chance that next July 4th may retain all the stars-and-bars patriotic branding, and millions of Americans will still grill and set off fireworks in a dim memory of our founding, but it won’t be America as you know it. Six months of Trump, Project 2025, and the MAGA will to power will alter the long arc of American life and progress.

I wish this were hyperbole. I wish this were a rhetorical construct to spur you to greater efforts in the fight. It’s not. What’s happened since last Thursday in the Democratic Party and the media is nothing short of loading the gun, handing it to Donald Trump and saying, “Kill me.”

Plenty of movements in history have been filled with people who are less educated, culturally aware, wealthy, and compassionate than the people who march to their deaths. All it takes is a leader willing and ready to do evil, a relatively small cadre of advisors, and a ruthless willingness to exercise power.

Better writers than I have tried to warn you. Timothy Snyder. Anne Applebaum. Robert Paxton. Jason Stanley.

The media’s indulgent race to create the biggest political story of our lives is nearing success; it’s not simply a pressure campaign by the media, MAGA, and shallow, self-indulgent political amateurs to hand the election to Trump. Some know that’s what they’re doing. Some cloak it in “This is a big story” rhetoric. Some have always had a profound dislike of Biden. On the C-Suite side, some see this as the cure for the death rattle of their ratings. (Ahem, CNN.)