America’s once kitschy obsession with Trump is no longer funny

Last week, after flying home to America for the first time since Donald Trump’s re-election, I made the familiar five-hour drive north from San Francisco to Lake Almanor. This part of California is one of the most MAGA-friendly counties in the state. In 2024, Trump won the seat by nearly 17 points.

I’ve been coming to this part of the West Coast for years, joining my best friend and her family to celebrate the Fourth of July – a weekend full of delightfully kitsch Americana. There’s the annual golf cart parade bedecked with American flags and sparkles, a rodeo, a fireworks show on the lake.

Trump signed his “big, beautiful” bill into law on the Fourth of July. Credit: AP

I grew up in a similar town in South Carolina, where the Fourth of July was an annual event replete with family traditions: the dessert pies the mothers baked, the meats the fathers barbecued, the brand of fireworks the kids were sent off to buy at the nearest petrol station.

In American mythology, this has always been a day when everyone could celebrate something that felt unifying: the idea of being American. Even in its darkest moments, this was still a country in which progress was deemed possible, one where those who demanded justice would one day be able to bend the arc toward a better place. But this year felt markedly different.

On the same day that Americans celebrated our nation’s independence, Trump signed into law a budget mega-bill that will axe critical healthcare and food support for the poorest people living in the wealthiest country on earth, while delivering further tax cuts to the richest.

In Lake Almanor, hundreds of golf carts taking part in the annual parade are adorned with inflatable Trump statues, or have MAGA flags flying in place of American ones. It’s a topic that comes up many times over the course of the weekend; the shame of seeing the American flag being lost as a symbol of equality or of our nation’s ideals, to now seemingly signal a border around those signed onto Trump’s grievance-filled vision of a country.

The once seemingly kitschy – and in some cases sycophantic – obsession much of America has with Trump is no longer funny. The painful irony of this adoration is that Trump’s latest bill will result in lives being lost in communities just like Lake Almanor. It’s estimated that between 11 and 18 million Americans will lose their health insurance as a result of the new bill, meaning either their healthcare bills become so high they go bankrupt, or they die because they’re unable to access essential services. Taxes that directly help fund rural hospitals in regions like this are also set to be lowered, while as much as $US3 trillion will be added to the national debt.

Though Republicans are attempting to sell the brilliance of the so-called “big, beautiful” bill, they know it is deeply unpopular. Days before its final passage, polling showed that just 29 per cent of Americans supported the bill.

For a long time, Democrats were criticised for losing touch with rural America. For Trump, the problem isn’t so much that he’s lost touch, but rather this bill proves that he never cared much for the poor and rural people he claims to champion yet clearly despises and thinks unworthy of help.

Even with the flags and fireworks and pageantry of this celebration of breaking free from the British, MAGA disciples do not have a stranglehold on patriotism. Real patriotism calls a nation to adhere to its own highest ideals, not that which allows its worst impulses. It’s found more in protests that demand equality or celebrate a diverse country in all its glory than in jingoistic displays of affection for a leader more comfortable with a cult of personality than a democratic state. It celebrates the forward march of a people toward a more perfect country, rather than looking backwards at a past that never actually existed.

It’s tempting to think that perhaps in some perverse way, America deserves this kind of devastation; a purging of our sins. Seeing people so openly and proudly tie themselves to a man and an ideology that will make their lives worse highlights just how many people are willing to go along with his lies for the sake of their own comfort.

But the comfort of self-delusion only assuages the dissonance of supporting a politician and a party that are destroying healthcare, aged care, and the finances of millions of working-class Americans. It’s short-lived, and it ends in devastation across Trump’s rural heartland.

But no one – not even those who voted for Trump – deserves this devastation.

Cory Alpert is a PhD researcher at the University of Melbourne looking at the impact of AI on democracy. He served the Biden-Harris administration for three years.

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