This thread resonates with me. I posted a while back that I was at an MLB game and realized during the national anthem that I didn’t want to sing it or even acknowledge it right now. The people currently in charge of this country are full of hate and I don’t feel right to honor that. I think July 4th will be weird this year and possibly for the next 4 years, maybe forever. I’m saddened by that but I won’t unconditionally profess my love to a country that is completely broken from the top down. Fuck that. I used to be fairly patriotic about July 4th, the national anthem, the Olympics, recognizing our country’s many accomplishments on the world stage, watching something like Band of Brothers and knowing my grandfather’s generation kicked some ass, the list goes on. Now those things evoke feelings of frustration and disappointment. Trump is an evil person, but MAGA is a disease that he unleashed on us and will be here long after he is gone. He has weaponized misinformation on a grand scale and created a perfect playbook for his eventual successors to continue down the same path. Corruption and lies are the keys to success because half of Americans think of politics as an “us vs. them” team sport or merely entertainment. Many people apparently get a sick pleasure from watching someone oppress people who are different (LGBTQ, female, brown, non-Christian, whatever), and they will gladly continue voting for politicians to continue to inflict that hate. America has a cancer for which there currently is no known cure. I don’t have much hope for a peaceful correction, unless possibly economic hardship eventually causes the MAGA movement to fail and a generation of voters dies off and gets replaced by people with new values. We also have to find a way to better educate (lol) our population and combat misinformation. All signs are currently pointing in the other direction.