Hendrix's Eccentric Commentary

7/2/2026

The 4th of July weekend has begun and the pundits and news sites are already beginning with the expected “celebratory” material. It is hard for them this year, with Trump and MAGA making straightforward celebration difficult, so most are going with some variety of: “well it’s a bad time but the United States has gone through worse and always managed to pull through so surely that’s what will happen again.”

While admittedly I have taken a very dark view of current affairs, here is some perspective: Athenian Democracy fell. The Roman Republic fell. The Venetian Republic fell. The Dutch Republic fell.

The writer S. M. Stirling has a line in one of his dystopian novels where a character says “you Americans are a people who think history cannot happen to you.” It can.