July 4th of this year marks the 250th anniversary of the declaration of independence and I am bracing myself for an overwhelming effusion of patriotic fervor. Given that Trump loves to wrap himself up in the flag (all while he and his family and cronies are looting the country), we can be sure that event will be even more disgustingly over the top than if someone sane was president.

As an immigrant to the US, I was struck by how so many Americans talk about patriotism and view it as an unalloyed good. Some immigrants become hyper-patriotic, perhaps to show that they really do belong here.

It is not that the concept of patriotismwas foreign to us in Sri Lanka. But it was not as pervasive. I recall that at a time of economic hardship, people were urged in the name of patriotism to grow more food and learn to live with less. As part of this movement to create patriotic feelings, movie theaters started playing the national anthem at the start. I remember feeling the pressure to stand up for it even though such gestures seemed merely performative. I now regret having done so.

I later abandoned the idea of patriotism altogether when I saw how the government used it to promote agendas that served its own interests and not those of the people at large. I now despise the entire concept of patriotism (and have written so many times in the past). I totally agree with Leo Tolstoy who wrote the following:
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Tulsi Gabbard is the director of national intelligence, tasked with overseeing the many intelligence agencies in the US. Although she tried desperately to suck up to Trump when it became clear that he was not happy with her for some reason, it was not enough for her to keep her job and today Trump fired her. You can read the twists and turns of her weird political journey here, where, like so many others, she sacrificed what she said were her strong principles in order to kowtow to Trump.

As usual, this kind of news is released on a Friday evening in the hope that most people will not be paying attention.

The White House forced Gabbard to resign, the Reuters news agency reported, citing a source familiar with the issue. Fox News was first to report Gabbard’s exit, citing her husband’s cancer diagnosis.

Trump was asking cabinet members last month whether he should replace Gabbard, according to two people briefed on the discussions.
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Gabbard already seemed marginalized last June, when Trump endorsed Israel’s decision to attack Iran before the US joined the war by ordering the bombing of the Islamic regime’s nuclear facilities.

The decision was a public repudiation of Gabbard’s earlier testimony on Capitol Hill that Iran was not building a nuclear weapon. Trump seemed to add insult to injury by declaring he did not care what she said, and dismissing her assessment as “wrong”.

Within weeks, Gabbard made a public effort to get back into the president’s good graces by calling for Barack Obama and several top national security officials in his administration to be prosecuted, alleging that they had conducted a “treasonous conspiracy” to falsely depict Russia as interfering in the 2016 election on Trump’s side.

She is the fourth woman that Trump has fired, following Kristi Noem, Pam Bondi, and Lori Chavez-DeRemer.

The big mystery is how FBI director Kash Patel still has a job. Patel is an incompetent grifter and clown. He should thank his lucky stars that he is male, since Trump seems to give men more leeway.

To no one’s surprise, the summit meeting between Trump and Chinese premier Xi Jinping did not produce any major agreements. Although Trump claimed to have settled a lot of issues, nothing was detailed about the main issues of Iran, Taiwan, trade, tariffs and rare earth supplies.

Trump took along with him a whole slew of business leaders and oligarchs from the US, but that did not seem to have produced any tangible benefit. It is not clear how they could personally contribute to such talks anyway. It seems like they were taken along because of Trump’s belief that having wealthy people along with him might somehow sway the Chinese to give concessions on technology and trade. That did not happen, as far as we know, and indeed despite the Boeing CEO being there, the deal on planes that was announced was for just 200 planes, a big drop from the 500 that had been expected before the summit.

Trump likes to play power games with foreign leaders such as with handshakes but this time it was Xi who came out on top. His mention of the ‘Thucydides trap’ seemed like a twofer. One was to show his intellectual superiority since it is certain that he knew that Trump would have no clue as to who Thucydides was, let alone what the trap was about. But his use of that trap also implies that it is China that is the rising power and the US the one in decline, and that the US should tread warily, especially on the issue of Taiwan.
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