Americans object to DoI read on 4th of July

Oh man, you've got to love news like this. As part of an Independence Day tradition for the past 29 years, National Public Radio has read the full text of the Declaration of Independence on the air. Well, this year, it also did something new: Tweeting it, in 113 consecutive posts.

And some folks on the Internet lost their minds, thinking NPR was advocating insurrection and spreading anti-Trump propaganda. The following are Twitter comments from the Boston Globe's article:[Source]

"Seriously, this is the dumbest idea I have ever seen on twitter," one user said after NPR had only gotten as far as the Declaration’s dateline. "Literally no one is going to read 5000 tweets about this trash."

"So, NPR is calling for revolution. Interesting way to condone the violence while trying to sound "patriotic". Your implications are clear," wrote another.

"Propaganda is that all you know how? Try supporting a man who wants to do something about the Injustice in this country," wrote a third. This is particular gem, given that the British were much less sympathetic to the institution of slavery than whites in the American South.

For people to protest against the country's founding document some 241 years after it was signed is an amazing irony, but I can understand the reaction. I remember reading the full text of the DoI back in 2008, back when I was in Army Officer Candidate School. To me, it sounded like something the Iraqis would could have written to George W. Bush. Here are a few passages that seemed relevant to me back in 2008:

• "He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within." (Bremer's dissolution of the Iraqi military and state, followed by the establishment of the Provisional Authority)
  
  
• "He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance." (Green Zone)
  
  
• "For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:" (the oil embargo)
  
  
• "For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:" and "For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences" (extra-judiciary rendition)
  
  
• And my favorite: "He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation," and "For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:" (And yet, Blackwater continued to operate with impunity)

Part of what makes the DoI's so incredible is its continued currency. Here we are, after 240 years, with some thinking that others are attacking our CURRENT leader with propaganda-like TRASH, and rallying around the alleged despot.

For all of President Trump's perceived faults, he can still count of a core of dedicated supporters, with whom he can do no wrong. Similarly, at least 20 percent of Americans opposed the Revolution and stayed Loyalist through the war. After the war, some 45,000 of us emigrated to Canada.[Source] Even Ben Franklin's own son ditched for England.

With those facts in mind, I think that no matter how bad things ever get for Trump, he'll always be able to count on at least a group of this size for a significant level of support. It's hard to imagine he could do any worse than the King of England, George III, did back in 1776.