18 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY JULY 2-8, 2026 www.montereycountynow.com With the nation’s 250th anniversary at hand, many Americans—including the president—prefer to whitewash the past. By Dave Faries DIVIDED As the so-called Tea Party movement gathered steam in the late 2000s, the Daily Show sent then correspondent John Oliver to a rally, where he encountered a man shouting the revolutionary slogan, “No taxation without representation.” Oliver calmly responded to the effect of, “You do realize you have representation, don’t you?” The man caught on camera is no different than many Americans in his understanding of the cause of the American Revolution. We have ingrained “no taxation” and overlooked what to colonists of the 1770s was the much more important demand: “without representation.” Many Americans are not particularly well-versed in details of the nation’s history. It’s likely that most can tick off the key events leading up to the Declaration of Independence 250 years ago—The Boston Massacre, The Stamp Act, The Boston Tea Party, The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere. And we can name key figures, such as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin. Our shorthand, however, makes the progression toward revolution appear orderly. Moreover, it invites misuse of the past. Among the Tea Partiers’ demands were lower taxes and a smaller federal government. But it was men like Franklin and Washington who recognized the need for a strong central government to replace the loosely-stitched authority of the Articles of Confederation, hammering out the Constitution just a few years after the end of the Revolutionary War. In our understanding of the nation’s history, Americans tend to fall back on a form of patriotic mythology that obscure or even dismisses nuances, shortcomings and contradictions. Now, 250 years after the Declaration of Independence, Donald Trump has stepped in to make matters worse. John Adams turned to the jury with his final thoughts. Seven months earlier—in March of 1770—British soldiers under the command of an officer had fired into a crowd gathered around their post, killing five, an incident known to posterity as the Boston Massacre. In the outrage that followed, Captain Thomas Preston and the eight men were arrested for murder. But Adams defended the soldiers, bringing forth evidence that they had acted in self defense. “Facts are stubborn things,” he told the jury. “And whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.” The jury of Bostonians had felt
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