Happy 250th Birthday to My Delusional, Racist, Abusive Family Member

I've never felt less like celebrating my country than I do now. A country that elects the worst person in the world twice after he's shown it exactly who he is deserves to be mocked, not celebrated. Still, its 250th birthday (which is obviously more significant than its 249th birthday or its 251st birthday) will only happen once, so I didn't boycott the festivities. I admit it was pretty fun to watch everything the orange taint did to promote himself for the occasion turn into a massive, abysmal failure - every music artist except Vanilla Ice refused to participate in his concert, his wrestling match was delayed by a thunderstorm, his newly renovated pool turned green, and his great American state fair shut down after all seven attendees got heat-related illnesses from that climate change thing they don't believe in. And today, DC residents were told to stay inside because his massive fireworks show made the air unbreathable, which is a pretty good analogy for everything he does to suck his own dick at our expense.

In Salt Lake City, fireworks are banned because Utah is experiencing the largest wildfires in state history from that climate change thing it doesn't believe in. What we really need is the largest data center in the country to give us more water. Naturally, many Utahns responded to this restriction to protect people's homes from burning down the same way they responded when they were told to wear masks in public so they didn't kill people during a global pandemic. The entitlement is simply nauseating and another symptom of the rot going to the core of this country that gave us two terms of President Trump. I want to scream in their faces that they can shove their "liberty" up their self-absorbed asses. As citizens of a society composed primarily of other people, they do not have a right, constitutional or otherwise, to set off explosives in areas with a high fire risk, no matter how pretty they think the colors are, and frankly, if they feel that strongly about fireworks, they have the minds of toddlers, which explains a lot. I find that the novelty of fireworks wears off after a few seconds, I hate not being able to sleep for a week in July because my douchebag neighbors are setting them off every night, and there's also the small matter of animals, babies, and veterans being traumatized just so people can see the pretty colors.

So anyway, Salt Lake City did a drone show instead. The lady next to me said "This is so much cooler than fireworks" at least thrice, and she wasn't wrong. I lived in the moment and watched it instead of filming on my phone, but I did take pictures of the beginning and the end when it paused for suitable intervals.

In between, the drones shifted and formed events and icons from American history - the Boston tea party, John Hancock's signature, the first airplane, the (fake) moon landing, ​the flag raising on Iwo Jima, Rosie the Riveter, Elvis, Michael Jackson, baseball, football, the Empire State Building, and the Statue of Liberty. They depicted Harriet Tubman and Martin Luther King, which was a nice way to acknowledge the worst parts of American history without bringing down the mood. I certainly don't expect a lot of nuance from a drone show, but it shouldn't be pure propaganda, either. It depicted protesters holding signs, with no clear implication of any specific protest, apparently to convey the message that protesters have made various things better throughout history. I was with some of the friends I've made through protesting, and of course I said, "That's us! That's us!" That is one of the most important rights we have in the US, which is why the orange taint has gone to great lengths to take it away, though courts and grand juries have stopped him at almost every turn. Our strong tradition of not having dictators gives us an advantage over wannabe dictators. Russians have no such tradition, and they have no legal right to gather for protests, but now that they have to wait in line for ten hours to get fuel because Ukraine is destroying their infrastructure, they have lots of time to discuss how much Putin sucks.

The drone show was such an impressive display of technology that it made me reflect on how fast we're moving into the future. I spend a lot of time living in the future because the present sucks. I dream of a world where climate change has been conquered, science and technology have solved most of our problems, and people have learned to get along and not suck. That last part is the least plausible and the most important. I love the progress of technology I'm observing, but the world is still kind of a dystopian nightmare. I guess all I can do about that is be nice to people and spread my message of spirituality in spite of their disinterest.

I also went to a free breakfast near the Capitol, wearing my Bernie Sanders/AOC shirt and the keffiyeh that was gifted to me by a Palestinian gentleman, which has done wonders to shield my face and neck from the heat. I stood in line for some time, and one of the organizers, an old man, came through the line apologizing for the wait. He stared at me for an uncomfortable few seconds, then was like, "You're protecting your head. That's smart." I was like, "Yep." He introduced himself and asked my name. He didn't do that for the people in front of me or behind me. I guess I made him uncomfortable with my visible display of Palestinian culture, and he made a concerted effort to be polite and welcoming anyway. Good for him! I was glad I didn't see any MAGA hats. Tolerance does not include hate groups.

​The state of the US on its 250th birthday can be summarized by a couple of viral images of Black people being crowded on public transportation by some of the 400 masked white supremacists, emboldened by the man that most of my family voted for, on their way to march at the Capitol. These pictures will be in history books, and children will be baffled that Americans in the year of our Lord 2026 put up with this shit.

Cheney Orr / Reuters

Finn Gomez / Getty Images

There is hope in these image, though. These pimples on Satan's scrotum are hiding their faces because even with their cult controlling every branch of the government, they know their views are wildly unpopular and would result in well-deserved consequences, legal and otherwise. Hitler's followers didn't hide their faces. Trump's followers have to. These same people claimed that masks made it impossible for them to breathe during the pandemic, and now they're covering most of their faces in skintight fabric in triple-degree heat. It's a pity they were able to breathe after all, but at least they were uncomfortable. The duty of every true American is to make sure they continue to be uncomfortable for the rest of their pathetic lives.

Speaking of masked white supremacists, the other thing I did to celebrate yesterday was attend a dance party outside the ICE warehouse that's apparently being sold because of public pressure or Kristi Noem's financial scandal or something, I don't know, but I'm not complaining. ICE agents had to sit in the parking lot and listen to our taunts for as long as we were there, though I didn't stay too late because I just turned 33 and I'm ready for the nursing home. A Flock camera in the parking lot of the warehouse across the street from us was like, "Attention, you are trespassing. Please leave the area. You are under surveillance, and you have been recorded." I'm surprised I don't remember the exact words because the damn thing said them over a hundred times despite us not trespassing anywhere at any point. Again, this drove home what a dystopian nightmare we're living in. That machine was straight out of an unpleasant sci-fi. That's not an optimistic note to end on, so here's a better one: ICE agents will be unemployable for the rest of their pathetic lives after this regime finishes collapsing.