What's Left to be Proud of?

Well if you ask me where I come from,
here's what I tell everyone:
I was born, by God's dear grace,
in an extraordinary place:
where the Stars and stripes and the Eagles fly."
-Aaron Tippin, "Where the Stars and Stripes and the eagles Fly"

Down in the shadows of the penitentiary,
out by the gas spires of the refinery,
I'm ten years burnin' down the road.
Nowhere to run, ain't got nowhere to go.
-Bruce Springsteen, "Born in the U.S.A."

In a 4th of July article back in 2022, I commented that Springsteen's iconic rock single (which was intended to be an anti-war protest song and got turned into a patriotic rallying cry at the urging of producers despite that style not fitting the lyrics at all) was a sort of "American expat national anthem," the way it wasn't afraid to take direct aim at the failures in American society but still seemed to throw its fist in the air in defiance, daring anyone in the world to challenge the singer's right to take pride in being from there. In 2025, six months into Donald Trump's disastrous second term, I look around this year, on my country's 249th birthday, and find precious little to be proud of. If I were asked to name the American expat national anthem I'd find myself more inclined to name Jason Aldean's "Rearview Town." "This ain't nothin' but a rearview town, broken hearts and rusted plows... it ain't nothin' o' what it used to be, population minus me." Indeed, I know for certain I'm not the only American who is looking around and asking what exactly my countrymen are celebrating this year.
America bills itself as the modern birthplace of liberty, the first place in the modern world where common people threw off not only the yoke of an autocrat, but the yoke of the institutions of autocracy altogether. Yet, this very morning, the so-called "One Big Beautiful Bill," which gives the executive branch of the government sweeping powers to bypass due process and strip citizenship from Americans, passed its final legislative hurdle and was sent to the desk of the same president who has openly threatened criminal action against anyone who criticizes him.
America bills itself as a "Christian nation." Why then, does the current administration take such pride in revoking anything in American society that could remotely be described as caring for the needy? Indeed, if someone were to stand on Capitol Hill and shout out "learn to do good! seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow!" (ISaiah 1:17) the response from the reigning party would likely be something along the lines of "fuck off, you candy-ass Liberal pussy!"
America bills itself as a country where people can start fresh. Why then, is the reigning US Party so proud this week of the "Alligator Alcatraz" camp they've built in the Florida Everglades? And why are Republican legislators openly bragging about killing 65 million people by sending them there with the openly stated intent that they are to die there?
America bills itself as a place where hard work pays off and the poor man has a chance to build a better life, which we claim is unique to our own land. Why, then, is our own financial mobility one of the worst in the developed world and getting worse, thanks to the extra expenses 71 million Americans will be saddled with as a result of the "Big Beautiful Bill?"
America bills itself as the "Arsenal of Democracy," a nation whose military might stands as a bulwark against totalitarian regimes who would seek to impose their will upon democratic neighbors. And yet, less than 48 hours ago, Donald Trump signed an order to cancel shipments of defense aid to an ally who handed over an absolutely extortionate level of their own mineral rights in return for that same aid (despite owing nothing for it since it had already been signed in pledge by the previous president). Within 24 hours of this decision, Donald Trump was on the phone with Vladimir Putin, and less than an hour after that phone call Russia began its largest aerial bombardment of Kyiv in the entire war, focusing more than 500 missiles exclusively on civilians without a single military target having been hit, or even fired at. As a result of this, combined with the same president's decision less than 24 hours before that to lift sanctions on Russia's largest banks, the last vestige of America's failing credibility died on the altar of Trump's urgent hunger to save Vladimir Putin's crumbling regime from collapse brought on by his ongoing failure in Ukraine.
America bills itself as the most powerful nation on Earth. Why then, do our own leaders openly state the reason for the aforementioned craven betrayal is a cowardly fear of confronting Russia, a third world petrostate whose military has had to beg for aid from Iran, North Korea, Syria, and reinforcements from all over Africa just to keep up the snail's pace of "progress" in their faltering war against Ukraine?
You know, as a lifelong Republican, I remember a time when there was no question what America stood for. We stood for the rights of the individual. We stood for justice. We stood for Godliness. We stood for every Human Being's right to have a fair shot in life at charting their own destiny. Frankly, if one were to look around America today and ask "what do we stand for today," the answers would appear to be "greed, ignorance, arrogance, sadism, and cowardice," and that indeed is only speaking of those few Americans left who would have the courage to stand for anything at all. If there is anything left of the America I remember, I can't see it.