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The cover illustration of May 11’s New Yorker magazine is titled “Red, White, and Kinda Blue.” It features George Washington looking glum. His jaw is propped disconsolately on his hand in a melancholy pose with his elbow resting on a bar; he nurses a sad martini; an ashtray full of cigarette butts smolders in front of him; in his mouth is a party horn he’s given a desultory puff of ironic celebration; the look in his eye is one of sadness and ennui.
The great man is unhappy with America’s condition as it reaches this year’s milestone. His illustrator muses that perhaps there is consolation that “climate catastrophes are still somewhat infrequent … you’re free to express your opinions, as long as you keep your voice down and remember who you’re talking to … [and] with any luck, the midterms will bring a ray of hope for the 251st Fourth of July, and beyond.”
We are meant to understand that the Founding Fathers subscribe to today’s left-wing fantasies about global climate disaster and tyranny in America. They yearn for Democrats to win in November’s elections and in 2028. They groan that Donald Trump is president.
Over on the other coast, the Seattle Times went out of its way recently to run a skeptical article about whether it was appropriate to cheer for the USA in the World Cup, given the awfulness of Trump. This reflects leftists’ sense that they must deprecate their country and also oppose anything Trump does so as to avoid implying that their country isn’t going to the dogs. This imperative overrides any other consideration.
(Illustration by Dean MacAdam for the Washington Examiner)
Actor Robert DeNiro, an archetypal left-wing lovey who was a fine actor a few decades ago, spoke in New York at a “collective” of malcontents and said, “Our country isn’t so lovable right now.” He offered a litany of shallow and tendentious complaints about war, millions losing healthcare, and dollars flowing to the “Trump-Epstein class.” He denounced masked militias, by whom he meant law enforcement officers, shooting citizens and torturing neighbors. He lamented America’s “racist, misogynist, xenophobic tyrant.” He wailed, “I want to love my country again. I want my country back.”
All this might suggest that discontentment on the Left is a temporary phenomenon, due simply to the fact that the political pendulum swung against Democrats and put Trump back in the White House and Republicans in charge on Capitol Hill. But it would be a mistake not to realize that leftist anger and militancy go much deeper. Nor will it be relieved by an election that goes their way. It is, rather, a top-to-bottom matrix of grievances — yes, current politics, but also a lasting, visceral, and deadly loathing for America itself.
As we reach this year’s Fourth of July, leftists will not merely refuse to celebrate their country. Many will wish it ill. They or their parents might have been among those who delighted in bicentennial celebrations 50 years ago, such as the sight of the massive flotilla of thousands of boats in the sunshine of New York City’s harbor.
But they would not join such an event now. Instead, many will wear faces of irritation and hatred on July 4, and they are not concerned merely with the pendulum of politics. They want a wrecking ball that swings only one way and decisively smashes the America that has gone before.
Democrats in New York have just nominated a 32-year-old socialist named Darializa Avila Chevalier to represent them on Capitol Hill. She is a keffiyeh-wearing convert to Islam who has posted on social media that she uses the American flag as a napkin to wipe her dirty hands. She sums up her politics as “revolution must continue,” refers to “the fascism ingrained in the American consciousness,” and declares “we are Westerners fighting for the total eradication of Western civilization. We stand in full solidarity with every movement for liberation in the Global South. Our Intifada is an international one.”
The cover of the May 11, 2026, New Yorker magazine. (The New Yorker)
These are not the thoughts of someone who would like America to thrive for another 250 years. And Avila Chevalier is, of course, hardly an isolated case. She was one of three socialists endorsed by socialist New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani who won their primaries on June 23. All the energy of the Democratic Party and the wider Left is with these radicals and their ilk. Some are already in Congress, and more will be after the November elections.
DeNiro’s desire to have his country back is, ironically, MAGA language. People yearning to have their country back were those who elected and reelected President Donald Trump.
It is hard to square the Left’s agenda with any desire for a restoration or return to an America we have all known and loved. It is obviously directed toward making America something it has never been before. A large and growing corpus of those on the blue half of the spectrum want carte blanche — year zero. That is clear in the rhetoric of the socialists, but has also been apparent for a long time in the agenda of the Democratic Party as a whole.
Both want to eliminate the Electoral College and elect the president by popular majority vote. This would let a few heavily populated states dominated by lefties ignore the concerns of the majority of more conservative states with fewer people. Tyranny of the majority is a Marxist idea — it is not what the founders had in mind.
The “kinda blue” party has also wanted for many years to pack the Supreme Court with permissive justices eager to waive the Constitution’s checks and balances and rubber-stamp the Democrats’ agenda.
It wants statehood for the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, calculating that this would add four permanent Democrat seats in the Senate, establishing a monopoly over policy and the confirmation or rejection of senior officials and federal judges. The Left, in other words, wants an end run around the Constitution. How is that getting its country back?
It wants to end the filibuster in the Senate, which requires 60 votes to pass most legislation. Trump also wishes this. But it is Senate Republicans who are preventing such constitutional vandalism from proceeding.
At left, actor Robert De Niro and activist Al Sharpton at a ‘No Kings’ protest in Manhattan, March 28, 2026; at right, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani with Democratic congressional nominee Darializa Avila Chevalier on election night, June 23, 2026. (Lett, Erik McGregor/Lightrocket/Getty; right, Seth Wenig/AP)
All these things and more suggest that what the Left seeks is not a return to the original vision of the country in which change was possible only with broad approval among the public and elected officials, and therefore required politicians willing to compromise. In this respect, the original vision of the country is definitionally conservative. The founders’ constitutional structure is built for stability and for evolution that is gradual and driven by something close to consensus. This is anathema to the Left, which wants revolution.
The Democratic Party is now effectively socialist with a deepening jihadi tinge. Socialism is a political creed of forced equality of outcome rather than equality before God and the law. It is about big government and top-down control. It is inimical to the founding idea of America, which is freedom — “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” The Left is not temporarily disenchanted with but fundamentally alienated from America, not just with its present government and policies but with the very idea of our nation.
Today’s Democratic Party contains hardly any moderate or centrist opinion. Much of it is candidly motivated by a sub-Marxist detestation of America’s most cherished values. It is almost a tautology to note that free people choose to live their lives and govern themselves, and they choose ways diametrically at odds with how the Left wants things arranged.
For the Left, America is not a shining city on a hill, a light unto nations and peoples everywhere, but an irredeemable force for ill. This was made plain by the mendacious historical textbook, The 1619 Project, which, though it is not much in the news these days, still expresses the Left’s prevailing views that America’s traditional ideals are hypocrisies and that the nation was founded for the enslavement of one racial minority and white supremacy over all others.
Because the socialist Left wants a new and wholly different America, and because socialists are rapidly taking over the Democratic Part
