{"id":690,"date":"2026-06-30T11:09:49","date_gmt":"2026-06-30T11:09:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/relocationacrossamerica.com\/?p=690"},"modified":"2026-06-30T11:09:49","modified_gmt":"2026-06-30T11:09:49","slug":"america-turns-250-not-everyone-is-celebrating","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/relocationacrossamerica.com\/?p=690","title":{"rendered":"America turns 250. Not everyone is celebrating"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

What does it mean to love a country that does not love you back? This is a question that Black and brown Americans, and members of other marginalized groups, have been asking themselves for centuries.<\/span><\/p>\n

Read more \u201cYou belong here\u201d: Unions rally for migrants hit by SCOTUS ruling<\/a><\/p>\n

With Donald Trump\u2019s return to power, many other Americans are having to ask themselves that question for the first time. And they are now being forced to confront painful answers.<\/span><\/p>\n

The tragic killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti<\/span>\u00a0in January by federal immigration officers in Minneapolis illustrate this. For white liberals and other white people of conscience, this means understanding that your skin color provides no guarantee of absolute protection against state violence in the Age of Trump.<\/span><\/p>\n

Immigrants who have been in the United States for decades are living in fear of being deported. The Trump administration has rendered their \u201cAmericanness\u201d and sense of belonging precarious and suspect.<\/span><\/p>\n

To see Trump elected again \u00adconstituted a moral injury for those who believed the American people were fundamentally good and decent.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

For many Americans, this Fourth of July, which marks the 250th anniversary of the country\u2019s founding, feels less like a celebration than mourning.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

America feels profoundly broken right now. For many Americans, this Fourth of July, which marks the 250th anniversary of the country\u2019s founding, feels less like a celebration than mourning.<\/span><\/p>\n

I asked Brynn Tannehill \u2014 a U.S. Naval Academy graduate, former naval aviator, trans activist and author who is now a resident of Canada \u2014 about what she is feeling as the holiday approaches. <\/span>\u201cI\u2019m not sure I can say I love the U.S. anymore,\u201d she said. \u201cWhat is happening goes beyond \u2018doesn\u2019t love you back\u201d: The U.S. voted for a man, and a party, that promised to eradicate transgender people, everyone like me, from public life.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

For Tannehill, who spent 30 years as a service member, what is happening under the Trump administration feels intensely personal. \u201cNow, I\u2019m essentially a person without a country: It no longer says I\u2019m worthy of being American, and I don\u2019t particularly feel like claiming to be an American given what the country collectively decided to do [in electing Trump].\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Tannehill\u2019s disappointment and loss echoes across tens of millions of other Americans. A majority now believes the country is heading in the wrong direction. According to a new Pew Research Center survey, nearly 60% of Americans say that the country\u2019s best years are behind it, and almost 70% are dissatisfied with the way things are going in the country today. Other surveys are showing <\/span>similar results<\/span>, with a <\/span>Gallup poll<\/span> finding that most Americans believe the signers of the Declaration of Independence would be disappointed in what America has become. This number has increased substantially from a quarter of a century ago.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

With Americans increasingly <\/span>believing<\/span> that democracy is imperiled and that Trump is a dictator, one-third of respondents declared in a March 2024 Monmouth University <\/span>poll<\/span> that they would, like Tannehill, move to another country if they had the opportunity because of the unhealthy state of America\u2019s politics.<\/span><\/p>\n

Historians Timothy Snyder and Marci Shore, as well as philosopher Jason Stanley, <\/span>left their jobs<\/span> at Yale University to take positions at the University of Toronto. Snyder and Stanley are leading experts on fascism and authoritarianism, and among the earliest public voices to sound the alarm about the existential threat Trump and MAGA pose to American democracy and society.<\/span><\/p>\n

In an <\/span>essay<\/span> published in the Yale Daily News, Snyder <\/span>explained<\/span> he was not fleeing<\/span> the country to escape Trump. But he still offered a qualifier: \u201cI did not leave Yale because of Donald Trump, or because of Columbia, or because of threats to Yale \u2014 <\/span>but that would be a reasonable thing to do and that is a decision that people will make<\/span><\/i>.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Read more A 29-year-old democratic socialist takes on Colorado\u2019s most senior member of Congress<\/a><\/p>\n

For all of Snyder\u2019s careful language, some heard an alarm being sounded about the rising fascist danger. Stanley was more direct. He left the U.S., he <\/span>said<\/span>, \u201cto raise my kids in a country that is not tilting towards a fascist dictatorship.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

If these scholars of fascism felt so compelled to leave, maybe it was time for other Americans to start thinking about leaving while they still can.<\/span><\/p>\n

I asked Tannehill about her decision to move to Canada, and if she had any advice for others. \u201cCan the country be saved? Is it survivable? If you answer yes to either one, you\u2019re probably better off not leaving,\u201d she said. \u201cI keep coming back to the quote that for most people living in an authoritarian state, life is \u2018<\/span>boring and tolerable<\/span>,\u2019 so it\u2019s survivable for most. If you think it can be fixed from the inside, even if it\u2019s not survivable if you fail, you probably have a moral obligation to try.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But Tannehill concluded something different.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIf things go the way I expect with the 2028 election [and] Trump and the Republicans will not surrender power, a lot more people will wish they [had] left,\u201d she warned.<\/span><\/p>\n

Decisions like this inevitably lead to questions about patriotism, and what it means to be an American patriot in this time of great crisis. There is a deep tension between an immature allegiance of \u201clove it or leave it,\u201d where America is almost perfect, if not divinely inspired, and loyalty is absolute. The other patriotism is more mature and aspirational. Grounded in critical love and thinking, it allows the country\u2019s flaws and failures to be confronted honestly so that the nation can be made into the best version of itself.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Trump and MAGA, with their nostalgic yearning to \u201cMake America Great Again,\u201d are the antithesis of this type of patriotism. At its core, the president\u2019s patriotic project is Orwellian, an exercise in historical erasure and the annihilation of truth.<\/span><\/p>\n

The 250th anniversary of America\u2019s founding is a reminder of a hard truth: Democracy is a skill and way of life that must be taught and learned. Civic life must be nurtured and renewed each generation.<\/span><\/p>\n

American neofascism under Trump offers a <\/span>\u201ctough lesson\u201d<\/span> about the atrophy of the country\u2019s democracy and institutions. Too many Americans thought our democracy was forever \u2014 and perhaps even worse, they wanted it on the cheap. They assumed that others would do the work of protecting our institutions, norms and values, which left our democracy exposed.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The American people must accept we have lost something and may not get it back. That is what happens with broken things.<\/span><\/p>\n

This Fourth of July, I will be thinking about the <\/span>iconic photograph<\/span> of Chief Petty Officer Graham Jackson watching President Franklin Roosevelt\u2019s funeral procession, tears streaming down his face as he plays the accordion. Jackson is many of us right now on both sides of the color line.<\/span><\/p>\n

But the sadness we are feeling as we mourn our broken democracy and society does not have to be paralyzing. It can be a healthy form of grief that can become the foundation for change, a call to action for democratic renewal.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Read more \u201cInjustice\u201d: Trump fumes after SCOTUS allows E. Jean Carroll verdict to stand<\/a><\/p>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On this July Fourth, Americans ask: What does it mean to love a country that won’t love you back?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":689,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[325,3,4,295,5,986,6],"class_list":["post-690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting","tag-america-250","tag-authoritarianism","tag-commentary","tag-democracy","tag-donald-trump","tag-july-fourth","tag-maga"],"yoast_head":"\nAmerica turns 250. 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