Once a year, we gather ’round the grill and pretend. We pretend we’re a sovereign people. That we govern ourselves. That the spirit of ’76 still haunts the halls of power and not just the packaging of craft beer and the occasional campaign speech. It’s Independence Day, America’s annual cosplay of liberty.
The story goes like this: brave colonists stood up to a distant king who taxed their tea and quartered his troops. They picked up their muskets, signed a parchment, and told George III to take a hike. What a moment! What a legacy!
But fast-forward 248 years and here we are tracked, taxed, surveilled, and sold like never before.
King George would blush at what passes for “freedom” today. The IRS doesn’t just tax your tea, it taxes your income, your land, your purchases, your inheritance, your capital gains; and if you die with anything left, they tax your grave too. Redcoats kicked in doors? How quaint. The modern state reads your emails, watches you from the sky, listens to your microphone, and calls it “safety.”
Back then, revolutionaries dumped tea in Boston Harbor. Today, we give our data to Meta, buy five Alexa devices for the house, and call it progress.
Let’s be clear: the new empire isn’t run from London. It’s a hybrid beast - part State Department, part Silicon Valley, part World Economic Forum. You think Congress calls the shots? Cute. Global banking institutions, unelected bureaucracies, and trillion-dollar firms now steer the ship. Google knows more about you than your spouse. Pfizer makes decisions faster than your doctor. And the IMF? They’ve replaced the redcoat with the spreadsheet.
We celebrate the Founders while ignoring that they’d be labeled “domestic extremists” if they tried today.
Jefferson’s notes would be flagged for disinformation.
Franklin’s print shop raided for seditious materials.
Washington’s militia? Doxxed and demonetized.
And yet, every year, we pop fireworks and salute a flag like everything’s still on the rails. We chant “land of the free” while being told what we can say, who we must affirm, how to identify, where to stand, and when to inject. Liberty has become a brand - marketed, repackaged, and worn on tshirts and bumper stickers.
But here’s the kicker: the illusion persists because deep down, we remember something real. Somewhere buried beneath the bureaucratic rubble, behind the buzzwords and biometric IDs, there’s still a spark. That stubborn, uniquely American belief that people ought to be free.
So this weekend, let the grills burn and the fireworks fly. Raise a glass not to what is - but to what was.
And maybe, just maybe, to what still could be.
Happy Independence Day! Brought to you by Amazon Prime, fact-checked by the Ministry of Truth, and powered by the Federal Reserve.
