Celebrate Independence Day by Insulting a Politician

Perhaps the one thing Americans still have in common is our eagerness to criticize government.

There's not a lot that unites Americans anymore, with too many people more aligned with their political tribes than with their shared nationality. But one thing that just about all of us like to do is bitch about people who hold government office. We don't bitch about the same lawmakers and officials, but we have that resentment of those who wield coercive power and the vitriol we direct at them in common. If nothing else ties us together as Americans, our eagerness to criticize the powers that be may stand as a final connection.

Not Even the Flag Holds Us Together

Even on Independence Day, not even the American flag necessarily speaks for our common citizenship.

"Today, flying the flag from the back of a pickup truck or over a lawn is increasingly seen as a clue, albeit an imperfect one, to a person's political affiliation in a deeply divided nation," Sarah Maslin Nir wrote for The New York Times in 2021. "What was once a unifying symbol — there is a star on it for each state, after all — is now alienating to some, its stripes now fault lines between people who kneel while 'The Star-Spangled Banner' plays and those for whom not pledging allegiance is an affront."

That squares with polling that finds Republicans view the flag more positively than Democrats. Little more than a third of Democrats now report being proud to be American—down from almost two-thirds a year ago when their party held the White House. Meanwhile, more than 85 percent of Republicans consistently report pride in being American.

…but We Have Harsh Words for the Powerful in Common

But proud of their country or not, and with or without the red, white, and blue, Americans have a common taste for calling out politicians and government officials for their conduct, their ideology, their personal failings, and especially for abuses of power. That's been true from the country's very beginning, when the founders tore into the British government and its king in the Declaration of Independence:

When a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.

Criticism of politicians didn't settle down after the revolution. After George Washington's presidency, the first contested presidential election in 1796 saw Federalist John Adams triumph over Democratic–Republican Thomas Jefferson. Language directed by the partisans of the solidifying political factions against one another became increasingly heated in ways that we could recognize today. Among the nicer things said, Federalists called themselves "friends of government" and their opposition "disorganizers."

From their dominant position, Federalists handled the exchanges of words by passing the Sedition Act which made it a crime to "cause or procure to be written, printed, uttered or published, or [to] knowingly and willingly assist or aid in writing, printing, uttering or publishing any false, scandalous and malicious writing or writings against the government of the United States, or either house of the Congress of the United States, or the President of the United States."

We're Americans. This did not calm things down. During the rematch of 1800, journalist James Thomson Callender described Adams as "a hideous hermaphroditical character which has neither the force and firmness of a man, not the gentleness and sensibility of a woman."

Later, unhappy with Jefferson, Callender wrote articles revealing that that Thomas Jefferson had fathered children with his slave, Sally Hemings.

In 1801, publisher and congressman Matthew Lyon, who had been prosecuted under the Sedition Act (and was reelected to Congress from jail), wrote to Adams—by then unsuccessful in his bid for a second term and handing his office to Thomas Jefferson—to gloat. "I hope and pray your fate may be a warning to all usurpers and tyrants, and that you before you leave this world, may become a true and sincere penitent, and be forgiven all your manifold Sins in the next," he gloated.

'No Kings' and 'Let's Go Brandon'

Usurpers and tyrants—those words sound familiar in today's political environment. It's common now to refer to opponents who win office as illegitimate beneficiaries of crooked vote counts and a rigged system, and as either "communists" or "literally Hitler" when they—inevitably, it seems—abuse the power of their offices.

In fact, there's a lot that seems familiar, after the anti-Trump "no kings" protests of June 14 which are scheduled to be reenacted—when else?—on Independence Day.

Can there be anything more American than protesting against government officials on Independence Day?

But just as American were the "let's go, Brandon!" chants and bumper stickers during the Biden administration. Born from a quite possibly deliberate misrepresentation by the press of "fuck Joe Biden!" chants by the crowd at a NASCAR race, the words became a way of tweaking the media while getting the point across without being bleeped or bowdlerized in news reports.

Just as when Adams and the Federalists were in office, members of whichever political faction temporarily has the whip hand often characterize those who have unkind words for them as disloyal or even treasonous. Under the old Biden-regime, criticism was "disinformation" or "misinformation." Under the Trump administration, protesters are "people that hate our country."

That's bullshit. Sure, there's some inaccurate information mixed in with the harsh words—there always has been, going back to the foundation of the country. And maybe some demonstrators really don't like the country—but most just have a different vision from that of their opponents of how it should work.

Americans don't agree on the role of government, economics, culture, education, or even about flying the flag. We'd be better off left alone to shape our lives and make our own way in this world. But we all agree that we have a natural-born right to unload our insults on government officials who piss us off.

Happy Independence Day. Go insult a politician to celebrate in traditional style.