On this July Fourth, Americans ask: What does it mean to love a country that won't love you back?

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America turns 250. Not everyone is celebrating
On this July Fourth, Americans ask: What does it mean to love a country that won't love you back?

By Chauncey DeVega
Senior Writer
Published June 30, 2026 6:45AM (EDT)


(Salon) What does it mean to love a country that does not love you back? This is a question that Black and brown Americans, and members of other marginalized groups, have been asking themselves for centuries.

With Donald Trump’s return to power, many other Americans are having to ask themselves that question for the first time. And they are now being forced to confront painful answers.

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America feels profoundly broken right now. For many Americans, this Fourth of July, which marks the 250th anniversary of the country’s founding, feels less like a celebration than mourning.

I asked Brynn Tannehill — a U.S. Naval Academy graduate, former naval aviator, trans activist and author who is now a resident of Canada — about what she is feeling as the holiday approaches. “I’m not sure I can say I love the U.S. anymore,” she said. “What is happening goes beyond ‘doesn’t love you back”: The U.S. voted for a man, and a party, that promised to eradicate transgender people, everyone like me, from public life.”

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With Americans increasingly believing that democracy is imperiled and that Trump is a dictator, one-third of respondents declared in a March 2024 Monmouth University poll that they would, like Tannehill, move to another country if they had the opportunity because of the unhealthy state of America’s politics. .....................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2026/06/30/america-turns-250-not-everyone-is-celebrating/