AMERICA 250
a turning point (4) USA
We’ve just passed 100 days since the beginning of the Iran war (the US-Israel military campaign against Tehran that began February 28th, 2026), and we are but a few days out from “FREEDOM 250” and a couple of weeks away from “America 250”, or more respectfully, the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States of America, on July 4th, 1776.
(Gotta say, FREEDOM250 makes for a decent discount code, but not a name for a respectable event, although, it tracks in a place that is more of a scam corporation than a country.)
wars without End
Polls consistently show that a large majority of Americans do not believe the US is winning the war with Iran, and even among supporters, there is deep skepticism. No one but the most sycophantic among us believes that we should have been in this war in the first place, and anybody with a brain capable of critical thought can see for themselves that America’s power is waning on the world stage.
America 250 does not represent checkpoint nor achievement. Instead, it represents a turning point, and much like untimely demise of the leader of Turning Point USA, our own statesmen have shot us in the neck. We are not building. We have not been building. We only destroy.
We haven’t won a decisive war in nearly a century, and even that was largely due to the USSR’s sacrifice and their steadfast approach to crushing Nazi fascists.
After that war, we didn’t imprison them, we didn’t interrogate them nearly as harshly as we do to many of our own citizens. Instead, we hired them to build rockets, bombs, and configure NASA as well as our CIA.
There’s not much more to say on that front.
Beyond that, the U.S. conducted what scholars describe as the genocide of nearly three million people in Korea, and the deliberate destruction of infrastructure and hundreds of villages, separating the nation into two separate and autonomous zones (at least for the northern half) while turning the south into a colony of the US, as it remains.
Vietnam was largely the same. Although previously colonized by the French, once the communists, led by Ho Chi Minh in the north, were pushing for their own liberation, the US decided to bomb the whole country, as well as Cambodia and Laos. Did we make any progress? Any gains? No. We lost tens of thousands of our own troops, killed upwards of four million Southeast Asian people (and left them with UXOs and chemical mutations lasting to the modern era), and then after 20 years, pulled out, defeated by the countrymen we were napalming and raining agent orange upon.
Not long after, we trained the Mujahideen, started Operation Desert Storm, went in to Iraq and then Afghanistan, which was also a failure. We have spent $8T since 9/11 alone to replace the Taliban with the Taliban. (Here is a searchable database created by Brown University students and faculty that tracks The Costs of War.)
Trump said no new wars. Maybe he meant the US desired no new wars, but his good friends in Israel certainly have been pushing for several decades to start a bombing campaign on Iran. Will Iran be any different? No. I wrote extensively about why (read it here).
Trump said this “military exercise” would last “a few days”, then updated that statement to “a few weeks.” It’s been a few months and Iran has recently said that they can go on for another decade with no problem.
Two months ago, the US State Department said that Iran’s capabilities were all but crushed, and they continue to repeat that, despite evidence otherwise. Within the last month, more realistic reporting, which actually goes with what previous American Intel had said as well, has come out to say that Iran still has 70-80% of the capabilities they started with before the war, according to a May 2026 DIA report leaked to the Washington Post. That’s neither restrained nor generous, just realistic.
bourgeois celebration
As we approach “FREEDOM 250” — the 250th USA birthday party that Trump is seemingly throwing for himself, complete with a UFC fight in front of the concrete slab formerly known as the Jackie Kennedy Rose Garden (now VIP seating), constructed by American tax dollars just like the new White House ballroom bunker — we see rising dialectical contradictions in everyday life that have become so apparent that even Trump’s own cult members are waking up to reality.
Wealth disparity today rivals the extremes of the French Revolution era, and in some ways is more deeply entrenched, with the top 1% owning over 35% of US wealth. This level of disparity has led many to invoke the guillotines of the French once again, an illustrative image of the times we are living in.
controlled Opposition
The way power is organized in western capitalist society does not allow for these voices to make a difference nor does it allow elections to make change, let alone represent the will of the people. Instead, it gives power directly to those with the most accumulated wealth who hold all of the power, or as Trump says, “hold all the cards”, and yet we don’t see mass class consciousness, or mass unions forming, or anything really happening in the streets aside from, say… a “No Kings” protest, which is organized through and permitted by the state and co-opted by controlled opposition that never threatens real power.
These protests, signs, and posters are allowed to be displayed in front of police stations and in windows of storefronts, libraries, and bakeries without consequence because they don’t challenge the powers that be.
Not merely a failure of representation, but active suppression across the country where peaceful protests are met with riot gear, mass arrests, and surveillance databases (Here are some example contracts and notifications!). Whistleblowers face decades in prison under the Espionage Act, used more aggressively now than ever before. Police departments receive military-grade equipment while schools go underfunded. Social media posts are monitored by federal agencies, and activists who speak against war or inequality find themselves on watchlists. The state does not need to declare martial law to crush dissent; it has perfected the art of doing so quietly, legally, and relentlessly. Meanwhile, the same system that jails the poor for petty theft allows billionaires to evade all consequences entirely. This is the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie on full display. Not a coup, but a slow, (mostly) lawful suffocation of any meaningful opposition.
What Is To Be Done
Reforms have failed. Electoral politics in a capitalist system are a dead end; they only favor those with the most money by design. What we need is a collective class consciousness, an organization that can make real change, revolutionary change. In a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, the proletariat (the working class) is expressly suppressed; crushed.
What we need is a dictatorship of the proletariat (workers’ councils, democratic control of production, and the abolition of capitalist class rule). What we need is to crush the bourgeoisie (the owning class, the billionaire class, the “Epstein class”). The left cannot be disarmed (Read: The ‘Disarmament’ Slogan). We cannot give up our weapons. We cannot give up our spirit, our hope, our revolutionary optimism. We will not give up. We must come together, rise together. Now is the time to read, organize, and meet your neighbors. Meet the members of your community and help them to see what is happening before their very eyes. Bourgeois elections will not change a bourgeois dictatorship. For that, a revolution is necessary.
References and Links (In Order of Appearance)
Official FREEDOM 250 White House Page - https://www.whitehouse.gov/freedom250/
Council on Foreign Relations, (3 June 2026) , “What Do Voters Think of Operation Epic Fury After Three Months?” - https://www.cfr.org/articles/what-do-voters-think-of-operation-epic-fury-after-three-months
YouGov, (21 January 2026), “Many Americans support Iranian protesters but few want U.S. military involvement in Iran” - https://yougov.com/en-us/articles/53927-many-americans-support-iranian-protesters-but-few-want-us-military-involvement-in-iran
History Extra, (9 August 2008), “Did the USSR Win the War?” - https://removepaywalls.com/https://www.historyextra.com/membership/did-the-soviet-union-win-the-war/)
PBS, (n.d.), “Nazi Technology”, - https://www.pbs.org/opb/historydetectives/feature/nazi-technology/index.html
ABC, (3 February 2005), “CIA faces pressure to divulge Nazis ties” - https://www.abc.net.au/news/2005-02-03/cia-faces-pressure-to-divulge-nazis-ties/630422
The Hankyoreh, (7 April 2007), “The people need to ask for truth regarding civilian massacres” - http://2012.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_editorial/201275.html
United States Institute of Peace, (Archived 31 Jan 2022, removed from original host webpage, Aspen Institute), “Overcoming War Legacies: The Road to Reconciliation and Future Cooperation Between the United States and Vietnam, March 26, 2019” - https://web.archive.org/web/20220131212247/https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/2019-3-26-CBailey-Panel-2-Intro-Closing-Remarks.pdf
Brown University, Jennifer Walkup Jayes, (8 February 2022), “Beyond the War Paradigm: What History Tells Us About How Terror Campaigns End” - https://costsofwar.watson.brown.edu/sites/default/files/papers/Walkup-Jayes_War-Paradigm.pdf
Brown University, (n.d.), Cost of War index - https://costsofwar.watson.brown.edu/
NBC, (8 June 2026), “Full interview: Trump says Iran ‘is not an endless war’ as conflict reaches 100 days” -
Washington Post, (7 May 2026), “U.S. intelligence says Iran can outlast Trump’s Hormuz blockade for months” - https://archive.ph/20260508020707/https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2026/05/07/cia-intelligence-iran-trump-blockade-missiles/
AP News, (7 June 2026), “Lawsuit seeks to stop the UFC fight on the White House South Lawn for Trump’s birthday” - https://apnews.com/article/white-house-ufc-fight-lawsuit-trump-birthday-da95554d7137ca297dd47951a3b95cc8
The Independent, (21 January 2026), “As the 1 percent get richer, the average American is still falling behind” - https://www.independent.co.uk/us/money/wealth-gap-richest-americans-b2904814.html
Muckrock, (n.d.), Searchable FOIA Archive on Surveillance - https://www.muckrock.com/foi/list/?agency=7505
The Helsinki Notebooks, (16 December 2025), “The Criminalization of Antifa” - https://helsinkinotebooks.com/2025/12/16/the-criminalization-of-antifa/
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, (1 October 1916), “The ‘Disarmament’ Slogan” - https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/oct/01.htm
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Love the narration! You are going to need to tell me your setup because I am lazy and will probably just copy you when I, eventually, narrate my own articles.