What could be more ridiculous than Donald Trump trying to ally his massive ego with the character and humility of Abraham Lincoln.”

DONALD TRUMP DOES NOT DESERVE FIREWORKS, and whatever display is set off on the Fourth of July, wherever, is not a tribute to him.

On the American flag, “the star is a symbol of the heavens and the divine goal to which man has aspired from time immemorial,” I read on the Internet. So I redesigned Old Glory above as I figured “We don’t need no stinkin’ stars” Donald might envision it in his egocentric mind—as he attempts to upstage Abraham Lincoln on the Fourth of July.

As Kamala Harris, Democratic presidential hopeful, commented on Donald’s Independence Day agenda, “I think the president needs to realize it’s America’s birthday and not his birthday.”

If Depraved Donald actually quotes or even paraphrases the closing lines from the Gettysburg Address—about “a new birth of freedom” and “government of the people, by the people and for the people” July 4 during his hijacking of the Lincoln Memorial for personal purposes—he could well be burned in effigy. That’s still perfectly legal under the law. When someone burns an effigy of a President, he/she is not threatening him with harm. He/she is making a statement, expressing an opinion. It’s a form of Freedom of Speech.

Trump already, by the way, appropriated that of, by and for the people bit in his recent supposed “campaign-kickoff” pep rally down in Texas.

I’ll bet even money that if Donald’s speech-writers don’t plagiarize Lincoln, he will go off script anyway to make the words his own. He’s addicted to narcissism. I’ll bow to the Vegas odds on whether he will further degrade the day by tossing off gratuitous insults against a few of his critics. He’s not above urinating all over a long-standing celebration consecrating the freedom to which we were endowed by the courage and resolution of our nation’s founders.

He has moved the usual fireworks display on the national mall to, of all places, the Lincoln Memorial, and inserted into the program a major address by “your favorite president, me!” What could be more ridiculous than Donald Trump trying to ally his massive ego with the character and humility of Abraham Lincoln.

Petula Dvorak of the New York Times summed up well Trump’s planned unseemly stain on the Lincoln Memorial, “the place of reckoning for our great nation’s original sin—the practice of slavery and the segregation and racism that still rock this country today,” His speech, she said, will be “an affront to President Abraham Lincoln’s spare brilliance, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s thundering oratory and Marian Anderson’s unforgettable contralto.”

This date itself has long marked the emancipation of early America from dictatorial rule. But one-man rule is something Donald actually seems to admire in what for all practical purposes are big-time autocracies—such as Saudi Arabia and Russia.

Presidents in years past were not a dominant presence crammed into this national salute to freedom. Today, Donald in his usual schoolyard-bully mode, has just barged in yelling “Mine, mine; this is all about me!” He is changing things into just another MAGA rally. And he’ll probably make the day more about military might than the birth of independence.

They wouldn’t have wanted you in the room, or even on the premises, on July 4, 1776, Donald, when they signed the Declaration of Independence, or in 1789, when the Bill of Rights was passed. And in 2016, a majority of American voters were screwed over by the Electoral College. Had the popular vote prevailed to place Hillary Clinton in office, the entire world would be a far better place in which to live right now.

Celebration of Independence Day would best be served by the absence of Donald Trump.

And one more thought here: We have a president obsessively opposed to putting abolitionist heroine Harriet Tubman’s image on the $20 bill—a black (gasp!) woman (gasp!) in place of slave-owning former president Andrew Jackson. Jackson, a president idolized by Donald, who himself remains fastened on racism and misogyny.

The Tubman recognition project, symbol of a progressive social conscience, was under way before Donald took office. It is now being subjected to serious stalling tactics by his administration.

As Donald struts around on the world stage bragging about the prowess of “his” military, he’s obviously not driven by the type of patriotism I grew up with over the past 90 years.

(Note: the title to this blog was taken from a remark by Maureen Dowd, New York Times.)


DID YOU KNOW? The U.S., under Trump’s administration, ranks 48th out of 180 countries for press freedom, according to Reporters Without Borders.