From This Day Forth

Happy 4th of July.
And yes, I’m wearing the same shirt as yesterday because I’m recording this in the past, for the future.

What I don’t know right now is whether the horrible, ugly, terrible bill has passed. Hopefully, you listened to my newsletter from yesterday about what could have been, what might have happened in a different multiverse, if the Build Back Better Act had passed. That bill, proposed by Joe Biden, had transformational potential. But two Democrats, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, blocked it. They prevented what could have been a different America.

So here we are, stuck in the bad timeline, the really bad one.

Since it's Friday and the 4th of July, I thought we could do a summary wrap-up of America.

I’ve always liked the 4th of July, not because of the history behind it, but because I like food and fireworks. I like holidays that don’t come with high expectations or gift-giving pressure. So for me, that’s Thanksgiving and the 4th of July, not because I endorse what they commemorate, but because they offer a break from the relentless emotional labor of holidays like Christmas or Valentine’s Day.

So let's review.

America was founded by people who claimed they were seeking religious freedom. But that’s not really true. The pilgrims came here because they wanted to impose an extreme version of religion. They were furious with the Church of England and wanted to establish their own restrictive, often cruel, systems. They were brutal to one another and to the Native peoples they encountered. They saw this land as theirs for the taking. So they took it.

This country, home of the free, land of the brave, was founded on stolen land with stolen people.

That includes my family. My ancestors were stolen from another place, brought here, and forced into chattel slavery, a form of enslavement that saw them as livestock, not humans. That’s not the same as other forms of slavery throughout history, although some like to pretend it is.

Yet America has always marketed itself as a place of freedom and democracy. In reality, it was founded on what scholars call Herrenvolk democracy, a system that extends rights and power only to a dominant group, in America’s case, white, land-owning men.

We fought the Revolutionary War, declaring that “all men are created equal.” But that didn’t apply to Native people or Black people, because we weren’t seen as human.

Then came the Civil War. Despite what some, like Chief Justice Roberts, would have you believe, that war wasn’t fought to end discrimination. It was about land and property. And we, Black Americans, were that property. The South never stopped fighting. One could argue that not only is the South rising again, but the principles of the Confederacy are ascendant.

Heather Cox Richardson, a fellow Substacker, has written about this brilliantly. I recommend her book.

After that came the Civil Rights Movement. And again, the myth: we figured it all out, ended racism, and moved on. That’s not true either. America has always refused to fully confront anti-Black violence and structural racism. We never had reparations. We never had land restoration. We never had a full, national reckoning with what was stolen from Black people.

Now we are here, in this moment.
And it feels like we're sliding backwards.

Or maybe we're not sliding at all. Maybe this is who we’ve always been. Maybe what we’re experiencing now isn’t a restoration of the past, but the full reassertion of what never really died.

So, what do we see as we end this week in America?

We see a proposed bill that threatens to reinstate a Herrenvolk democracy, a system for and by wealthy white Protestants. Sure, they'll let a few others in at first, but eventually, those folks will be marginalized too. The signs are already there.

We’ve seen ICE targeting green card holders. We've seen the state challenge even naturalized citizens. These actions echo the Fugitive Slave Acts, which weren’t just used to return runaways, but to kidnap free Black people and force them into slavery. If you’ve seen 12 Years a Slave, you know exactly what I mean.

We are witnessing the rise of a police state, and once again, the public is resisting.

Everything old is new again.

Then came the tweet, from Laura Loomer, close Trump ally and frequent speaker of unhinged things. She said, about Trump’s so-called “Alligator Alcatraz” detention camp in Florida:

“If the alligators are hungry, we have 65 million meals to feed them.”

That number, 65 million, is the total population of Hispanic and Latinx people in the U.S. Not undocumented immigrants. Not recent arrivals. All Latinx people.

That’s who she’s talking about feeding to alligators.

If that doesn’t wake you up, I don’t know what will.

Meanwhile, Trump continues to suggest that Black people, regardless of our degrees or credentials, should take the jobs the immigrants leave, you know, picking fruit, working in meat processing. He doesn’t care if I have a law degree. He doesn’t care if you have a PhD. He means “get back to Black jobs,” and that is exactly what he means.

This week, I discussed the terrible bill and the alternative future we could have had if Build Back Better had passed. But Joe Manchin chose wealth and industry over his constituents. Sinema, I’m not even sure what she chose.

I also had a great conversation with cybersecurity expert Shari G, or as she pronounces it, Sha-ri G. We talked about cybersecurity, travel safety, diversity, and how we can collectively address the challenges of this administration.

I also hit 1,000 Substack subscribers, which is so meaningful to me. It reminded me of something: artists and writers used to have patrons, people who supported their work so they could create without compromise. I don’t have a da Vinci-era patron, but I have you, my readers, my supporters, my collaborators, and my community.

You are my modern-day patrons, in spirit, emotionally, and yes, for some of you, financially. And I appreciate you deeply.

Now that we've passed this milestone, I want to explore what’s next. How do we grow this into a sustainable, long-term project? I believe I have something substantial to offer, something more than what many hide behind a paywall.

So let’s talk next week about what this can become.

Before I go

Paula Dufour

sent me something to think about for the 4th of July.

Instead of simply saying “Happy 4th,” it asked a question:

From this day forth, what will you do?
Of the people, by the people, for the people.

So I’ll leave you with that.

What will you do from this day forth?

To move this country in a different direction?

To help us get off this timeline?