Death to America, Delivered by the Big Beautiful Bill
How Domestic Policy and Collective Amnesia Undermine the American Promise
Introduction: The Irony of Outrage
During the recent 12-day war between Iran and Israel—a conflict in which America’s military and diplomatic shadow loomed unmistakably via its support for Israel—the familiar chants of “Death to America” once again echoed through the streets of Tehran. Western media seized on these images: crowds in black, marching behind the coffins of slain commanders and nuclear scientists, their voices rising in unison with the old slogan, “Death to America, Death to Israel.” News cycles replayed the scenes, amplifying the outrage and reinforcing the narrative of a uniquely hostile, irrational enemy. At state funerals, in public squares, and on social media, the chant became a symbol—platformed and dissected, its meaning debated but rarely understood in its full context.
Yet this ritual outrage, so predictable and so performative, obscures a deeper and more bitter irony. For while Americans are encouraged to see themselves as the perpetual victims of foreign hostility, the true threat to the American experiment comes not from the streets of Tehran, but from within. The advancement of the so-called “big beautiful bill”—a sweeping act of domestic self-sabotage—reveals the intentions of those who seem to wish “Death to America,” or at least those wielding power in their name.
This essay is an autopsy of the American experiment, an attempt to trace the wounds—self-inflicted and otherwise—that have brought us to this moment. Drawing on political theorists, philosophers, and activists from across the spectrum, I argue that the real danger to America is not the rhetorical violence of foreign adversaries, but the persistent, structural violence Americans inflict on themselves: through policy, through amnesia, and through a refusal to reckon with the violence at the core of their own history. Until this truth is confronted, the outrage over foreign chants will remain a distraction from the slow-motion dismantling of the very ideals America claims to defend.
The American Experiment: Promise and Paradox
The United States was founded on a set of radical Enlightenment ideals: liberty, equality, the pursuit of happiness, and the notion that government derives its legitimacy from the consent of the governed. These principles, articulated by thinkers like John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau and later expanded by American philosophers such as John Dewey and Cornel West, were never fully realized. The American project was always aspirational—a horizon, not a destination.
James Baldwin wrote, “The American ideal, after all, is that everyone should be as much alike as possible,” yet the reality has been one of “people who have been kept apart by the most elaborate and sophisticated means ever devised by any society for the separation of men.” The tension between promise and practice is the engine of American history, and it is precisely this tension that is now being exploited and exacerbated by those in power.
The “big beautiful bill,” far from advancing the American experiment, is a betrayal of its founding aspirations. It is a legislative act of forgetting, a refusal to reckon with the violence and exclusion that have always haunted the nation’s ideals.
The “Big Beautiful Bill”: A Blueprint for Decline
Let us be clear about what the “big beautiful bill” actually does. Heralded by its supporters as a triumph of American renewal, it is in fact a legislative monument to national self-sabotage. Its provisions read like a checklist for the managed decline of a society:
Massive cuts to Medicaid, Medicare, and the Affordable Care Act, stripping healthcare from millions, especially the poor, elderly, and disabled.
Sharp reductions in funding for public education, with block grants replacing targeted aid, exacerbating inequalities between rich and poor school districts.
Rollbacks of environmental protections, allowing polluters greater leeway and undermining agencies tasked with safeguarding public health.
Increased barriers to voting, including strict ID requirements and limits on mail-in ballots, disproportionately disenfranchising minorities, the poor, and the elderly.
Expansions of border enforcement and immigration restrictions, further criminalizing those whose labor underpins the economy but whose humanity is denied.
Tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, accelerating the upward redistribution of wealth and deepening economic inequality.
Weakening of labor protections, making it harder for workers to organize and easier for employers to exploit.
Each of these provisions, celebrated as “restoring American greatness,” is in fact another blow to the fragile project of democracy and social solidarity. The bill is not an aberration; it is the logical endpoint of decades of policy choices that have hollowed out the American promise from within.
Healthcare: Withholding the Basics of Life
If the health of a nation is measured by how it treats its most vulnerable, then the “big beautiful bill” would be a clear act of violence against the American body politic. The bill’s unprecedented cuts to Medicaid, Medicare, and the Affordable Care Act are not mere budgetary adjustments; if enacted, they would be conscious decisions to withhold the basics of life—preventative medicine, emergency care, maternal health—from millions.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates that these cuts could result in an additional 11.8 million Americans becoming uninsured by 2034—a figure that dwarfs the population of many entire states. This is not the work of foreign saboteurs. It is the work of Americans, acting in the name of “fiscal responsibility,” who have decided that some lives matter less than others.
Philosopher Martha Nussbaum argues that a society that denies its members the basic capabilities to flourish is no democracy at all. The “big beautiful bill” is a legislative act of triage, consigning the poor, the sick, and the marginalized to early graves while congratulating itself on its moral clarity.
Education: Starving the Mind
The attack is not limited to the body; it extends to the mind. The bill’s sharp reductions in funding for public education would be part of a broader effort to “wind down” the Department of Education entirely, returning control to the states. In practice, this would mean further entrenching inequalities between rich and poor districts, urban and rural communities, white and nonwhite students.
But the assault on education is not merely financial. Across the country, free speech is being curtailed in schools and universities, with topics deemed “unacceptable” by those in power—race, gender, sexuality, the history of American violence—banned from curricula. The very First Amendment freedoms that Americans claim to cherish are being undermined by those sworn to uphold them, as government officials and private actors alike engage in censorship and repression rather than “more speech, not enforced silence.”
John Dewey, the great American philosopher of education, warned that democracy is not a machine that runs itself, but a way of life that must be constantly renewed. The “big beautiful bill” would be an act of sabotage against that renewal, starving the mind and narrowing the horizons of possibility.
Democracy: Rigging the Game
Perhaps the most egregious irony lies in the realm of democracy itself. The bill’s provisions for increased barriers to voting—strict ID requirements, limits on mail-in ballots, purges of voter rolls—are part of a broader trend: gerrymandering, voter suppression, the manipulation of election dates and procedures, all designed to entrench the power of a shrinking minority at the expense of the majority.
President Trump’s recent executive order sought to reshape election processes nationwide, mandating proof of citizenship for voter registration and requiring all mailed ballots to be returned by Election Day—measures that election officials and legal experts argue violate the Constitution and infringe upon state rights.
Political theorist Sheldon Wolin warned that the United States risks becoming an “inverted totalitarianism,” where democratic forms persist but the substance is hollowed out from within. The “big beautiful bill” represents a step further down that road, replacing the reality of democracy with its empty shell.
Immigration: Demonizing the Lifeblood
America was built by immigrants—by those who fled persecution, poverty, and violence in search of a better life. Yet today, immigrants are demonized, detained, and deported in record numbers, their labor exploited even as their humanity is denied. The bill’s expansions of border enforcement and immigration restrictions are not about security; if enacted, they would be about exclusion, about defining who counts as American and who does not.
This is not a new story. As Hannah Arendt observed, the nation-state has always struggled to reconcile its universal ideals with the particularities of blood and soil. But the current wave of nativism represents a profound betrayal of the American experiment—a retreat into tribalism and fear.
The Collapse Within: Evidence of Decline
The progress of the bill occurs against a backdrop of accelerating social decay:
Trust in one another is at historic lows—fewer Americans believe “most people can be trusted,” and each new generation is less trusting than the last.
Social mobility is in freefall, with the gap between rich and poor widening and the middle class shrinking.
America’s global reputation is plummeting, with confidence in U.S. leadership and influence falling sharply around the world.
Political conflict, economic difficulty, and fears of societal breakdown dominate public expectations for the future.
Isolation and loneliness are epidemic, as Americans spend more time alone, disconnected from neighbors and civic life.
Sociologist Johan Galtung predicted that the collapse of the American empire would begin not with foreign conquest, but with the unraveling of its own institutions and values. The “big beautiful bill” is the legislative embodiment of this collapse: a government turning its back on the basic needs of its people, eroding the very foundations of trust, mobility, and shared purpose.
Robert Putnam, in his seminal work Bowling Alone, chronicled the decline of social capital and the fraying of civic bonds. The bill’s gutting of public goods—healthcare, education, environmental protections—would accelerate this atomization, leaving Americans more isolated, mistrustful, and vulnerable.
Harvard economist Raj Chetty’s research on social mobility shows that the American Dream is already slipping away: children born in the 1980s have only a 50-50 chance of out-earning their parents, compared to over 90% for those born in 1940. The bill’s cuts to education and social programs would only further entrench this decline, ensuring that upward mobility becomes a myth for all but the privileged few.
American Amnesia: The Violence of Forgetting
The bill’s deepest violence, however, is not only in what it proposes, but in what it refuses to acknowledge. It is a legislative act of national amnesia, erasing the realities of how American wealth and power were built and maintained.
Historian Jill Lepore has written that “the past is an inheritance, a gift and a burden.” Yet the bill’s architects, and the society that enables them, refuse to reckon with the foundational violence of slavery, genocide, and exploitation. The United States was built on the backs of enslaved Africans, whose forced labor created the wealth that powered the nation’s rise. The violence of that system—physical, psychological, economic—has never been truly addressed or repaired.
Angela Davis reminds us that “we know the road to freedom has always been stalked by death,” and yet the bill would double down on the structures that perpetuate racial and economic violence. Instead of investing in communities harmed by centuries of injustice, it would divert resources upward, reinforcing the hierarchies that have always defined American life.
The American project has always depended on a certain kind of forgetting. James Baldwin wrote, “The great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us, are unconsciously controlled by it… History is literally present in all that we do.” Yet the “big beautiful bill” and the politics it represents are predicated on denial—of the violence of slavery, the dispossession of Indigenous peoples, the exploitation of immigrants, and the unfinished struggle for equality.
Hannah Arendt warned that the refusal to reckon with history is the precondition for totalitarianism. When a society cannot face its own crimes, it becomes susceptible to leaders who promise restoration through exclusion, repression, and myth.
W.E.B. Du Bois saw that the “color line” was the defining problem of the American century, and that the failure to address the legacy of slavery would haunt the nation. The bill’s attack on social programs, voting rights, and immigrant communities is a continuation of this long history—a refusal to build a society in which all can flourish.
Slavery: The Unacknowledged Foundation
To understand the depth of American amnesia, we must confront the central fact that the United States was built on the violence of slavery. The wealth of the nation—its banks, its railroads, its universities, its very capital—was constructed with the stolen labor of enslaved Africans. The violence of that system was not incidental; it was foundational.
As Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote in his landmark essay “The Case for Reparations,” “America begins in black plunder and white democracy, two features that are not contradictory but complementary.” The democracy that Americans celebrate was made possible by the exclusion and exploitation of those deemed less than human.
The “big beautiful bill” is a continuation of this logic. By slashing social programs, gutting public education, and criminalizing the poor and the immigrant, it would reaffirm the hierarchies that have always defined American life. It is a refusal to reckon with the violence at the nation’s core—a violence that has never been truly addressed or repaired.
The Only Ones Wishing “Death to America” Are Americans Themselves
The outrage over chants of “Death to America” abroad is a distraction from the slow-motion suicide being enacted at home. The “big beautiful bill” is not a restoration, but a eulogy: a testament to a society that has lost faith in itself, that cannibalizes its own future, and that refuses to remember the violence at its foundation.
Cornel West insists, “Justice is what love looks like in public.” The bill is the opposite: it is what fear, greed, and amnesia look like when codified into law.
If there is to be hope, it will not come from those who advance such bills, but from those who resist—who remember, who organize, who demand that America live up to its promises. Until then, the only ones truly wishing “Death to America” are Americans themselves, wielding the tools of policy, law, and forgetting to dismantle the very experiment they claim to defend.
Conclusion: Radical Honesty and the Unfinished Project
If we are to save the American experiment, we must begin with radical honesty. We must admit that the greatest threat to America is not the chants of foreign crowds, but the actions of American leaders and citizens who betray the nation’s highest ideals. We must resist the temptation to scapegoat the Other, and instead turn our gaze inward.
For in the end, the only ones truly wishing “Death to America” are those who, through policy and practice, make a mockery of its promise.
As Alexis de Tocqueville observed, “Nothing is more wonderful than the art of being free, but nothing is harder to learn how to use than freedom.” That hard lesson is being forgotten—by Americans themselves.
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