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I Love America—Now Trump Has Bombed My Family in Iran
Since my country’s leaders and its intelligence community have regularly reaffirmed that Iran is not a nuclear threat, why would Donald Trump, as well as Republican Senators like Lindsey Graham and Ted Cruz, so casually betray that community and the trust of the American people?
Jul 11, 2025
We bombed Iran and, despite a temporary cessation of hostilities, it’s likely that President Donald Trump and his counterpart in Tel Aviv, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, intend to drag the United States into yet another destabilizing effort in the Middle East, perhaps the most dangerous one yet. As an Iranian American, I feel as if my greatest fears are now being realized.
Like many Iranian Americans, I love this country and the many blessings that it’s provided my family — so much so that I proudly chose to wear the uniform of its Navy. I’ll never forget the immense sense of pride I felt, on July 31st, 1996, when I was sworn into the United States Navy, or the unparalleled sense of responsibility I experienced when I wore my uniform for the first time as an American sailor graduating from boot camp at the Recruit Training Center in Great Lakes, Illinois, in 1997. I then had the honor of being selected as the first Iranian American to serve as a member of the United States Navy Presidential Honor Guard in Washington, D.C. And on every one of those occasions, my loved ones, Iranian immigrants all, proudly stood by my side, beaming with joy as I embarked on what I viewed as a sacred commitment to serve the nation that I love.
We Have to Remember Who We’re Meant to Be
Like many immigrant families, mine came to the United States in search of peace, prosperity, and the possibility of becoming part of the fabric of the country that had given the world the Bill of Rights and the sacred tenet of “equal justice under the law”; the country that had given history George Washington, John F. Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, Jr., among others; the nation that had served as a safe harbor for German refugees like Albert Einstein and Hollywood film director Billy Wilder fleeing Nazi persecution; the great nation that did indeed free the world from the scourge of Hitler and the Third Reich in World War II, and later landed the first men on the surface of the moon. No nation has had so much potential to do good in the world as we do in the United States of America. Our Founding Fathers, imperfect as they might have been, passed on to us the proposition that liberty and human dignity are anything but idle words — that they are, in fact, fundamental human values written in the very hearts of every person. In short, they passed on to us a promise: that all men, every soul, in fact, is endowed by our Creator with life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Nor did those founders suggest that such sacrosanct, if now seemingly self-evident, values stopped at American shores. They were all too aware that, for centuries, imperial forces had pillaged and wreaked havoc globally on smaller, defenseless countries and on civilizations virtually everywhere. Throughout the centuries, such imperial powers had risen by way of their strength, if not their virtue, and fallen thanks to their global misadventures. And let’s be clear, by any metric you want to mention, the United States is indeed a global imperial force at an all-too-critical crossroads. The question is: Will we allow parasitic and nefarious entities and interests to drain us of our resources, cajole us into breaking yet more international laws, and turn us into a global pariah while betraying the great founding promise of our republic?
With Donald Trump at the helm of state, the answer is likely to be a resounding yes.
Why the Con, Don?
In order to understand the peril in which we find ourselves as a nation, we need look no further than Trump’s recent betrayal of his own director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard. Just three months ago, she testified before Congress that, according to the assessment of the intelligence community, Iran had not made the decision to weaponize its nuclear program.
When asked about Gabbard’s assessment recently, Trump quipped, “I don’t care what she said,” as if she had merely been offering an opinion of her own, not testifying about a multi-agency conclusion that Iran was not a nuclear threat. In fact, as a matter of religious edict, Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, had declared a “fatwa,” ruling that the potential global devastation of nuclear weapons violated the very tenets of the Islamic faith and that his country was forbidden to develop such weaponry.
For my part, more than 25 years ago, as a young sailor on active duty, I found myself recruited by the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Defense HUMINT Service (now the Defense Clandestine Service) specifically because of my Persian-Farsi skills and cultural knowledge. Even then, it was widely reported that our government had a wealth of intelligence capabilities when it came to determining the exact scale, scope, and goals, not to speak of mindset and shoe sizes of the Iranian leadership, especially when it came to their military and nuclear capabilities.
It’s Never Actually Been About Nukes or Regime Change
To be clear, I’m no fan of the repressive Iranian regime and wholeheartedly reject its fundamentalist ideology. At the same time, since my country’s leaders and its intelligence community have regularly reaffirmed that Iran is not a nuclear threat, why would Donald Trump, as well as Republican Senators like Lindsey Graham and Ted Cruz, so casually betray that community and the trust of the American people?
Why would the Trump administration allow itself to appear to be so schizophrenic by moving the goalposts on what has often seemed like a daily basis? The answer: such head fakes and confusion are part of their strategy. Chaos is the point, a crucial aspect of the psychological tactics deployed against the American public to distract us from their end game. My guess is that, not unlike Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s brain worm, Donald Trump and many of the corporate oligarchs who support him suffer from a parasitic infection — a murderous devotion to Israeli Prime Minister (and International Criminal Court-charged war criminal) Benjamin Netanyahu’s master plan for the Middle East. He, of course, seeks to destabilize that entire region and expand the borders of Israel into countries like Lebanon, Syria, and even possibly the Iranian peripheries. That scheme, called “The Greater Israel Plan,” has been the decades-long aim of radical right-wing elements in the Israeli government.
The modern iteration of that strategy was commissioned by Netanyahu himself. As Jonathan Granoff asks at The Hill:
“Why does [Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s Likud Party] make no credible effort at building a better future for Palestinian people, knowing it serves only to align their interests more closely with Hamas? And why amid all the chaos strike Iran and aggravate the risk of wider war? Where does Israel’s policy of violent coercion rather than cooperation and an ever-widening reliance on military force come from?”
And he answers those questions this way: “It actually has an identifiable source. In 1996, Netanyahu, then Likud party leader, commissioned the policy document ‘A Clean Break, A New Strategy for Securing the Realm,’ whose lead drafters were neoconservatives Richard Perle and Douglas Feith, co-architects of the disastrous U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq.”
The desire to implement just that end-game scenario by hardline members of the Israeli government is the only reasonable way to explain the otherwise confounding actions of both the Trump and Netanyahu governments. A rational person could argue that the hundreds of millions of dollars poured into the Trump campaign in 2024 by pro-Israel billionaires like Miriam Adelson were a mere pittance when compared with the possibility of stealing so much in the way of land and resources in the Middle East. You could also be forgiven for imagining Benjamin Netanyahu, seduced by the wicked wiles of that infamous crew, considering the constricted borders of Israel and thinking: Why not? Why shouldn’t I take it?
Of course, I’m hardly the first person to notice the strange, almost cultish loyalty of so many of our elected officials to his dangerous way of thinking. For instance, in his book Solving 9-11: The Deception That Changed The World, investigative journalist Christopher Lee Bollyn wrote: “Today, the United States of America is by all appearances an Israeli-occupied state. The U.S. Congress dutifully authorizes the annual payment of an immense tribute to Israel, some three thousand million dollars a year.”
Bollyn certainly offers a striking explanation for the events now taking place before our eyes, the voluntary death spiral into which we, as a nation, have been thrust at least in part by the radical Netanyahu government and his death-cult devotees led by the current American president.
Blowback: It’s Not Good for Israel Either
In the same way that Donald Trump’s greed-fueled ambitions far outweigh any desire to do right by the United States, Benjamin Netanyahu’s psychopathic schemes in pursuit of his end game have only served to degrade the international reputation of Israel, making it (outside of the United States) essentially a pariah nation. Even within this country, the Trump administration’s kowtowing to the whims of Netanyahu’s regime, from an unprecedented crackdown on free speech (supposedly to quell “anti-semitism”) to defunding major universities, has earned a massive backlash from both the left and the right.
What makes all of this so tragic is that the state of Israel, through its citizenry, has the capacity to do so much good in this world of ours. My Jewish friends all have a keen sense of justice and a deep sense of compassion towards the plight of the oppressed, values that have been handed down to them, particularly from Holocaust survivors who witnessed the abject evil wrought upon humanity by men with messiah complexes who were without honor or virtue. And that’s exactly why Israelis should, in the end, reject the likes of Benjamin Netanyahu, so that their country can indeed once again become a cherished safe haven for the Jewish people living alongside the future nation of Palestine.
In that regard, one could easily make the case that the greatest threat to the nation of Israel is Benjamin Netanyahu. In his years of public life, due to his unrepentant acts of horror and violence, especially in his latest tenure as prime minister, even American support for Israel has cratered. And the global decline is starker yet, with European nations like Ireland, Luxembourg, and Spain now considering massive embargoes of the Israeli state.
Freedom Is Not Free, Can America Survive?
In 1997, when I was stationed in Washington D.C., my friend Jeff (Smitty) Smith’s little brother came to visit him from Missouri. Smitty and I took him around D.C. and finally came to the then-newly-built Korean War Memorial. If you’ve been there, then you know that the stark and hallowed message of that memorial is: “Freedom Is Not Free,” words chiseled in stone. On seeing this, Smitty’s brother was taken aback, and asked, “What does that mean?” Then 19 years old, I hadn’t really thought about that, but it hit me instantly. “I think it means,” I told him, “that our American soldiers are willing to pay the ultimate price for our freedom.”
I thought of that day again as I was writing this, how in the age of Donald Trump we’ve betrayed the sacrifices of all those generations and how far we’ve fallen as a nation. After I reached out to my editor, Tom Engelhardt, with my ideas for this piece, my mom asked me if it was “safe” to write such an article while Trump was president. After all, he and his goon squad, to their everlasting shame, have gone to the ends of the earth to crush free speech, especially any criticism of Israel or the administration’s nefarious deeds writ large. (Just ask Rumeysa Ozturk, a Tufts University student who dared coauthor an op-ed questioning the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians by the Netanyahu regime, only to quickly find herself disappeared off the street by masked agents of the Department of Homeland Security and imprisoned by the American government.)
In truth, that such thoughts even entered my mother’s mind or mine made me first sad and then ticked off. But certain patterns of history seem all too tragically repetitive. When an imperial power is in peril, unless there is a significant course correction, potential tyrants can take control, with the urge to destroy sovereign nations abroad and crush sacred freedoms at home.
In truth, though, it doesn’t have to be that way for us. Yes, we are now governed by wildly lesser men than the great ones of our past. Which is why none of us should cede any ground, when it comes to patriotism or the very idea of national security, to the likes of Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth who mistake violence and jingoism for love of country. Such lesser men have the urge to manipulate the immense levers of power in their own favor while using those same levers to crush the righteous dissent of the American people.
This is no longer a matter of right versus left, but of uniting all people of peace and goodwill to reclaim the promise of our founding, ensuring that the precious future aspirations of all peoples, be they Americans, Israelis, or Iranians, not be crushed within the grip of a death cult of End Times fundamentalists who, like Heath Ledger’s Joker in the Batman film The Dark Knight, would happily engulf human civilization in flames and laugh as the world around them burns.
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Why Is the Media Normalizing Nuclear War and Its Effects on US Populations?
The meme-contour of recent articles seems to invite a casual shoulder shrug with respect to the dark road that we’re now heading down and to minimize the powder keg of conflict looming in the Middle East.
Jul 08, 2025
As a political journalist, I typically monitor about six or seven print publications and a somewhat absurd number of online ones. But I recently noticed a disturbing trend—a slew of articles with titles like “Apocalyptic map shows worst U.S. states to live in during nuclear war” or “Nuclear Fallout: Is Your State Safe?” Then there’s my personal favorite “10 U.S. States with the Best Odds of Surviving Nuclear Fallout and the Science Behind Their Safety.”
The second article informs us in a blithe and matter-of-fact tone that “recent geopolitical tensions have reignited concerns over nuclear safety across the United States. According to a detailed risk assessment featured on MSN, states along the West Coast (California, Oregon, Washington) and East Coast (Florida, Maine, Tennessee, Alabama, Ohio) have lower immediate fallout risks compared to central states.” And then, in a tone that could well be used to describe the best air conditioners to buy this summer, we’re cautioned that: “Even states considered safer are not guaranteed refuge from longer-term global impacts such as nuclear winter and widespread humanitarian crises.” Well good to know. Now we can all plan our summer travel accordingly. (As a brief aside, it should be noted that the MSN risk assessment article referred to is no longer available and has been yanked from the website. Curious.)
Articles such as these nudge us toward the psychologically unhealthy space of accepting a situation that should never be accepted.
My first reaction upon seeing these articles was a kind of visceral astonishment. The tone was jarring and, frankly, appalling. Were these perhaps AI-generated pieces coming from a digital source that has no real idea of the emotional resonance required to discuss nuclear war? Quite possibly. Does this point to a design flaw in AI that will never really be eradicated? Also, quite possible. My second more measured reaction was that such articles might inadvertently expose flaws in the veneer of the rational calculus that underlies the basis for what we sometimes generously called modern “civilization.”
So, what’s behind this disturbing attempt on the part of various media outlets to normalize the prospect of nuclear war? For starters, articles like these speak to a deep cognitive dissonance around this topic that’s been evident in sociopolitical environment ever since the horror of Hiroshima. The meme-contour of these articles seems to invite a casual shoulder shrug with respect to the dark road that we’re now heading down and to minimize the powder keg of conflict looming in the Middle East. The matter-of-fact tonality about the possibility of nuclear Armageddon is deeply troubling. Articles such as these nudge us toward the psychologically unhealthy space of accepting a situation that should never be accepted.
Unpacking the Psychological Roots of Militarism
The Scottish psychiatrist R.D. Laing described our socially conditioned and sometimes blithe acceptance of war and militarism as a form of mass psychosis, noting that “insanity is a perfectly rational adjustment to an insane world.” In a brilliant essay on this topic, clinical psychologist Frank MacHovec noted that “Wartime behavior deviates markedly from cross-cultural social norms and values. The irrationality and emotionality of war is a radical departure from accepted normal behavior... Wartime behavior of and by itself meets current diagnostic criteria for a severe mental disorder.”
MacHovec goes on to discuss war as a function of Freudian death instinct:
We award medals to and hail as heroes or martyrs those who kill more of the enemy. One nation’s freedom fighter is another’s terrorist, even though it may be the same behavior… Victims are dehumanized into objects, and robot-like violence depersonalizes the aggressor in the process… Defense mechanisms of denial, externalization, projection, rationalization, and splitting block reality testing have the effect of reducing anxiety and protecting against stress. Violence then becomes part of the array of defense mechanisms. Emotion overrides reason and logic in public education and controlled news media that reinforce aggression.
Do Governments Persuade Us to Accept War as “Normal”?
As if our own unruly and erratic human impulses weren’t enough cause for concern, when it comes to the application of violence-as-solution, Western and other governments (often in a position of power as the result of war settlements and therefore having “something to defend”) spend a considerable amount of time and effort normalizing war in both popular culture and the political sphere. Here in the U.S., the CIA funds ceremonies and rituals in venues such as NFL games designed to promote acceptance of the so-called glories of war. Hollywood does its part with movies like Top Gun that position the violent extermination of enemies as noble or brave. In fairness to a broader perspective, we can and should posit that, as individuals, those who fight in wars are often in fact noble or brave in specific situations. Certainly, they have been persuaded to and are willing to risk their lives for a cause and this takes both courage and selflessness.
That said, these qualities of selflessness are often exploited to persuade us that that war itself is somehow an acceptable solution to periodic disagreements that arise between the governments of nations. Adding nuclear acceptance to the mix is when the notion of more severe psychological aberration comes in. Far from being “diplomacy by other means,” our best historians have shown us that wars often benefit economic elites in power. Even worse, modern warfare has shown a disturbing tendency to focus on harming civilian populations. History reveals that, here in the U.S., elites have at times funded both sides of a conflict or stood to gain from both supplying armaments and rebuilding in the aftermath. We see this in extremis in President Donald Trump’s bizarre plans to turn Gaza into a resort area.
Clearly, the corporate profit-driven machinery of the political establishment and military-industrial-complex can now steamroller over public opinion with cavalier impunity, aided and abetted by both political parties.
The cold hard fact is that many wars are fought for all the wrong reasons: territorial domination of economically important resources (such as oil in the case of Iran and Iraq); economic benefits associated with supply chains; or the mere continuation of empire. But when the possibility of nuclear war becomes either conveniently ignored, gamed, or normalized by any given administration including those of Presidents Trump or Joe Biden and with willing complicity from the mainstream media, then I suggest it crosses the line into the territory that Laing alludes to. It also suggests a potent reason why trust in government is at an all-time low.
Another angle on the psychology of this dynamic is offered by Dr. Kathie Malley-Morrison, a former professor of psychology at Boston University and a member of Massachusetts for Peace Action. In “No, I Can’t Help! Psychic Numbing and How to Confront It, ” she provides a valuable perspective on odd and even bizarre psychological responses to the nuclear war threat that involve either magical thinking around notions of “surviving” or garden-variety denial:
Warnings about the dangers inherent in the availability of nuclear weapons in Russia, the United States, its allies, and other nations can be heard right, left, and center across the political spectrum… Why, then, do we not hear of massive actions against the continued development and sales of nuclear weapons, and the threats by nuclear power countries to use them? One of the answers is psychic numbing—a psychological phenomenon that can affect both individuals and entire cultures in ways that allow atrocities—and existential threats—to grow and spread.
Malley-Morrison points out that psychic numbing is also called “compassion fade.” The article goes on to clarify further:
At the individual level, psychic numbing is a psychological process of desensitization to the pain and suffering of others, particularly as the number of people experiencing pain and suffering increases… Exposure to information about genocides or nuclear holocausts or other catastrophes involving more than a very few people may lead to an emotional shutdown; the very idea of such horrors can seem too painful to tolerate.
She then cites the work of Robert Jay Lifton, an American psychiatrist, while observing that “whole societies or cultures can also be subject to psychic numbing. Within militarized societies, numbing, desensitization, and a general sense of pseudo-inefficacy— the feeling that some problems are so beyond one’s control that one is helpless to solve them—may even be encouraged.”
War and unchecked militarism are unquestionably one of the greatest causes of human suffering. Is humanity now at an existential crossroads where we must simply reject it as an option and wake up to the folly of our own collective self-programming? Given the realities of large-scale polycrisis, a third world war with nuclear, AI, and autonomous weapons in the mix is the last thing humanity needs. Further, it seems abundantly clear that, as governments around the world falter in their efforts to effectively deal with the multi-headed hydra of polycrisis, many are once again falling back on a familiar pattern of state-sanctioned violence against other nations as a “solution” and a means to bolster the power of incumbency.
Sadly, even when large segments of the populace oppose militarism (as is clearly the case here in the U.S.) it has become abundantly clear that our own government will do whatever it pleases without regard to democratic input or sentiment. This might lead us to wonder whether a 2014 Princeton University study stating that true democracy in the U.S. is a thing of the past might not have been painfully accurate. Clearly, the corporate profit-driven machinery of the political establishment and military-industrial-complex can now steamroller over public opinion with cavalier impunity, aided and abetted by both political parties. And while a certain situational adaptability is likely one of the best qualities of the human species, paradoxically, it might also be one of the worse.
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What July 5th Taught Me That July 4th Never Did
The U.S. celebrates independence while denying it to others; Venezuela fights for sovereignty while being punished for it.
Jul 05, 2025
Growing up in Venezuela and now living in the United States, I’ve always felt caught between two independence days: July 4th and July 5th. Two celebrations. Two flags. Two very different ideas of what it means to be free.
In the U.S., the Fourth of July comes with fireworks, parades, and an almost unquestioned belief in the righteousness of the revolution it commemorates. But in Venezuela, July 5th conjures up different thoughts. It is not just a break from colonial rule but the beginning of a long, unfinished struggle to define freedom on our own terms. It’s not something we inherited. It’s something we’re still fighting for.
And now, from where I stand, I can’t help but see the contradictions. One country celebrates independence while denying it to others. The other fights for sovereignty while being punished for it.
Venezuela’s July 5th is not about fireworks. It’s about survival, resistance, and the ongoing struggle to build a future rooted in dignity.
The story of Venezuela’s independence is part of a much longer, bloodier history. The entire region of Latin America and the Caribbean erupted into revolutionary movements more than two centuries ago, not out of ambition, but as a response to some of the worst atrocities in human history. Colonization, slavery, forced conversions to Catholicism, cultural erasure, and resource extraction didn’t just leave economic scars, they tore at the heart of our collective humanity. As Eduardo Galeano wrote, “Our wealth has always generated our poverty by nourishing the prosperity of others.” Independence wasn’t a beginning; it was resistance and a demand to reclaim everything stolen, silenced, and buried.
In Venezuela, the independence process was shaped by the ideas of the Enlightenment and the revolutions in France, the U.S., and Haiti. But Simón Bolívar, our “Liberator,” wanted something more than a flag or a change in rulers. He envisioned a republic built on justice, not just sovereignty. A society where slavery would be abolished, land would be redistributed, and governance would belong to the people. Speaking before the Congress of Angostura in 1819, Bolívar declared, “The most perfect system of government is that which produces the greatest possible amount of happiness, social security, and political stability.” This wasn’t about replacing a crown with a new president. It was about reimagining society itself, building a nation rooted in dignity, equality, and the well-being of all.
It was a vision far ahead of its time. And it came at a devastating cost. Venezuela lost half of its population during the wars of independence. But as Bolívar said, the other half would have given their lives, too, to make freedom real.
Venezuela became free from Spain, but not from exploitation.
After the discovery of oil beginning in the 1920s, the country became a new kind of colony, one shaped by foreign corporations and U.S. geopolitical interests. While oil profits filled the pockets of multinational companies and domestic elites, the majority of Venezuelans lived in poverty, with no access to healthcare, education, or housing.
That began to change in 1998, when Hugo Chávez, invoking the legacy of Bolívar, won the presidency and launched what became known as the Bolivarian Revolution. He called on the people to reclaim democracy, not just through elections, but through participatory structures, economic justice, and sovereignty. For many who had long been shut out of the system, it was the first time they saw themselves reflected in their own government.
It was transformative. And it was deeply threatening to the powers that had always treated Venezuela as a resource, not a republic.
The Bolivarian Revolution was seen as a threat to U.S. imperial interests from the very beginning. From the moment Hugo Chávez took office in 1999 and began redirecting Venezuela’s oil wealth toward social programs, land reform, and regional integration, the backlash began. He refused to follow the neoliberal script written in Washington, and for that, he was targeted.
In 2002, the U.S. backed a coup attempt against Chávez, which briefly removed him from power before a massive popular uprising brought him back. But the attacks didn’t stop. Economic sabotage, disinformation campaigns, and diplomatic isolation escalated over the years.
After his death in 2013, the campaign intensified. Under Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela was hit with the full-spectrum of economic warfare: hundreds of unilateral coercive measures, the freezing of billions in international assets, restrictions on food and medicine imports, and open support for regime change. A war without bombs.
This is daily life for Venezuelans. And yet, we’re told these policies are meant to help us. You don’t help people by starving them. You don’t “defend democracy” by trying to force another country to its knees.
Here in the U.S., it’s easy to treat independence as something that was achieved once and for all in 1776. But if that were true, why is our country still trying to control the fate of others? Why do we claim to stand for freedom while undermining it abroad through sanctions, coups, and endless wars? And even more urgently: why are so many people in the U.S. still struggling just to survive?
Empire comes at a cost, not only to the people we target, but to the people right here at home. While the U.S. government spends trillions on foreign wars and military bases, our communities are told there’s “not enough” for universal healthcare, housing, or public education. The same officials who lecture the world about freedom are the ones who lined up to vote for the “Big Beautiful Bill,” a package that bankrolls war and delivers massive tax breaks to billionaires while dismantling the programs that keep people housed, fed, and alive
We’re told to celebrate freedom while immigrants are deported, unhoused people are criminalized, and Palestinian solidarity is silenced. We’re told we live in the greatest country on Earth, even as life expectancy drops and student debt skyrockets.
So when I hear U.S. leaders talk about spreading democracy, I can’t help but ask: Whose democracy? Whose freedom?
You can’t claim to support democracy and starve a population at the same time. You can’t celebrate independence while trying to overthrow other governments. And you can’t speak of justice if your policies enforce inequality on a global scale.
As a Venezuelan-American, I’m proud of the history that Venezuela has fought for. And I want to be proud of the United States, the country I also call home. But that will only be possible when the U.S. chooses respect over domination, when it ends the sanctions, when it stops weaponizing aid, democracy, and freedom to serve its own economic interests.
Venezuela’s July 5th is not about fireworks. It’s about survival, resistance, and the ongoing struggle to build a future rooted in dignity.
So while the U.S. celebrates its independence this week, I hope more people take a moment to ask: What are we really celebrating? And at what cost?
True independence isn’t about flags or anthems. It’s about the right to choose your own path without being punished for it. If we’re serious about “liberty and justice for all,” then we have to mean it. Not just here, but everywhere.
Real freedom doesn’t come wrapped in patriotic speeches or military parades, it comes through struggle, sacrifice, and the refusal to bow to empire, no matter what form it takes. Whether in Venezuela or the United States, the fight for dignity continues. Eduardo Blanco captured this truth in Venezuela Heroica, when he wrote: “To restrain the passions of people when they’ve been pushed beyond reason is harder than stopping the sea itself.”
And that’s exactly what we’re witnessing in every mobilization, every boycott, every refusal to accept injustice as normal.
The tides of liberation can’t be contained by borders, bullets, or decrees. Not in Venezuela. Not in Gaza. Not in the United States. Not anywhere.
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