Raise your hand if you agree that @realDonaldTrump is a traitor

Happy Independence Day!

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all [humans] are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

Although our founding, at its inception, represents a grave contradiction, the framers aimed to release the shackles of tyrants, monarchs, and despots that plagued the world. America was an idea - a novel, wonderful experiment in the laboratory of self-government.

The American revolution gave the world a template for democracy. In The Federalist No. 1, Alexander Hamilton asked "whether societies of men are really capable or not, of establishing good government from reflection or choice." That question was answered in the affirmative.

In the centuries that followed, inequitable societies began to crumble. Self-government started to sweep across the world, improving human rights and many other things.

Our past, to be sure, is hypocritical and beyond messy. But to summarily dispose of the framers' brilliance is short-sighted. We must acknowledge the warts that come with our independence, while still learning the other key lessons and building upon them.

The best way to reconcile the hypocrisy is to consider the Constitution's preamble.

"We the People of the US, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves, do ordain and establish this Constitution."

The words "a more perfect Union" acknowledge that perfection is impossible. Humans are not perfect. As James Madison wrote in The Federalist No. 51, "If men were angels, no government would be necessary."

Based on the foregoing, Abraham Lincoln, struck by some other-worldly inspiration, crafted the Gettysburg Address in the wake of one of the bloodiest battles in American history - a battle in which the Union stopped the Confederates' northern march.

Lincoln exclaimed: "The world ... can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather, to be decimated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here, have, thus far, so nobly advanced....

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us ... that this nation ... shall have a new birth of freedom - and that, government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

Against this backdrop, it is critical to underscore that, as @BarackObama correctly noted in his farewell address, "history does not always move in a straight line but sometimes zigzags."

Donald Trump has proven to be the demagogue that Alexander Hamilton envisioned.

"When a man unprincipled in private life desperate in his fortune, bold in his temper, possessed of considerable talents, having the advantage of military habits — despotic in his ordinary demeanour — known to have scoffed in private at the principles of liberty — when...

such a man is seen to mount the hobby horse of popularity — to join in the cry of danger to liberty — to take every opportunity of embarrassing the General Government & bringing it under suspicion — to flatter and fall in with all the non sense of the zealots of the day ...

It may justly be suspected that his object is to throw things into confusion that he may ‘ride the storm and direct the whirlwind."

Donald Trump, a fascist, poses an existential threat to the republic. The nation must categorically repudiate the lawlessness, the corruption, the nepotism, the lying, the hate, the bigotry, and the utter incompetence.

Vote for @JoeBiden. Register to vote. Make sure your family and friends are registered to vote. Support democrats up and down the ticket. The GOP must be eviscerated. It must face consequences for the unprecedented and grotesque dereliction of duty.