Happy Birthday, America. We Brought You a Gift Receipt.
Tomorrow, America celebrates 250 years.
Or at least that’s what the invitation says.
Somewhere between the fireworks, the flag-themed paper plates, and Uncle Bob explaining the Constitution while simultaneously misquoting it, we’re supposed to pause and celebrate the remarkable experiment called American democracy.
Instead, it feels as though someone rented out the birthday party for a vanity event, rearranged the furniture, trampled the flower beds, and insisted everyone applaud while pretending nothing unusual was happening.
You know that feeling when you walk into your house after a toddler has been left unsupervised with a Sharpie?
Imagine that.
Now imagine the toddler has executive authority.
The White House has long belonged to the American people—not to a president, not to a political party, not to a television personality auditioning for history. Every administration leaves its fingerprints. That’s inevitable.
But there is a difference between stewardship and treating the place like a personal branding opportunity.
Apparently, somewhere along the way, someone confused “Commander in Chief” with “Director of My Own Reality Show.”
It’s difficult to celebrate the nation’s birthday while wondering whether the adults have quietly slipped out the back door.
Then there is the Supreme Court.
Remember when justices were introduced with phrases like “independent judiciary” and “above politics”?
Those were fun times.
Today, every major decision is greeted less with legal analysis than with the same question people ask after a suspiciously lucky casino winner walks away with three yachts.
“Really?”
Public trust isn’t destroyed all at once.
It erodes.
One luxury vacation.
One undisclosed gift.
One conveniently timed opinion.
One ethical shrug at a time.
The Court doesn’t merely issue rulings.
It depends upon legitimacy.
And legitimacy, once cracked, is a lot like your favorite coffee mug.
You can glue it back together.
But everyone notices the fracture.
Meanwhile, we are assured that everything is perfectly normal.
Perfectly normal.
Perfectly constitutional.
Perfectly ethical.
Perfectly coincidental.
It’s amazing how often coincidence seems to vacation with wealthy benefactors.
Perhaps I simply don’t understand the sophisticated legal principle known as “Nothing to See Here.”
Maybe the Founders forgot to include a chapter titled:
How to Explain Why Billionaires Keep Buying Dinner.
Perhaps that page was lost in transit.
And then there are those who proudly call themselves constitutional conservatives.
I keep looking for the conserving part.
Conserving institutions?
Not particularly.
Conserving checks and balances?
Only when convenient.
Conserving democratic norms?
Those seem to have been placed in the recycling bin.
Words still matter.
If you repeatedly hollow them out, eventually they become decorative labels stuck on empty boxes.
Patriotism isn’t measured by the size of your flag.
Or the volume of your anthem.
Or the number of red, white, and blue products you purchase before July Fourth.
Patriotism is what you do when democracy becomes inconvenient.
It’s insisting that no person—not a president, not a justice, not a billionaire donor—is above accountability.
It’s believing that public service should actually involve… serving the public.
What a quaint little concept.
Here’s the thing that gives me hope.
History has a terrible habit of embarrassing powerful people who mistake applause for approval.
Empires have fallen.
Kings have discovered crowns aren’t bulletproof.
Strongmen eventually discover that mirrors cannot rewrite history.
And ordinary citizens—those boring people who vote, organize, write letters, show up, ask questions, and refuse to surrender reality—have repeatedly proven stronger than oversized egos wrapped in patriotic bunting.
America’s 250th birthday doesn’t belong to one politician.
It doesn’t belong to six justices.
It doesn’t belong to billionaires.
It doesn’t belong to cable news.
It belongs to every person still stubborn enough to believe democracy requires participation instead of performance.
Tomorrow there will be fireworks.
Some will explode in the sky.
Others will undoubtedly erupt online.
Either way, remember this.
The Declaration of Independence wasn’t a celebration of perfection.
It was a declaration that concentrated power deserved to be questioned.
That government exists because citizens consent—not because leaders demand applause.
That liberty is an ongoing responsibility, not a marketing campaign.
So tomorrow, I’ll celebrate America.
Not because everything is fine.
But because generations before us fought to leave us something worth defending.
I’ll celebrate the teachers who tell the truth.
The journalists who keep asking uncomfortable questions.
The judges who honor the law over politics.
The public servants who quietly do their jobs.
The neighbors who still believe facts matter.
The young people who haven’t given up.
And everyone who understands that loving your country sometimes means refusing to clap while someone dismantles it.
Happy 250th birthday, America.
You deserve better houseguests.
And frankly…
It’s time we stopped confusing fireworks with warning flares.
Julie Bolejack, MBA
The Mindful Activist
subscribe to avoid the overlords and algorithms julies-journal.ghost.io
