RANDALL WHITE, NORTH AMERICAN NOTEBOOK, TORONTO. MONDAY, JUNE 16, 2025. In traditional western historical literature the term “June Days” denotes “an uprising staged by French workers from 22 to 26 June 1848 .. in response to plans to close the National Workshops, created by the Second Republic in order to provide work and a minimal source of income for the unemployed.”

Carrying on with the Wikipedia article on the subject, the “National Guard, led by General Louis-Eugène Cavaignac, was called out to quell the rebellion. Over 1,500 people were either killed or injured, while 4,000 insurgents were deported to French Algeria. The uprising marked the end of the hopes of a ‘Democratic and Social Republic’.”

In France the June Days of 1848 can also be seen as the beginning of the historical process by which the short-lived Second Republic (1848–1852) turned into the Second Empire (1852–1870) under Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, nephew of the original Napoleon Bonaparte who had turned the First Republic (1792–1804) into the First Empire (1804–1815).

More broadly, 1848 was a year of political change and (most often ultimately failed) revolutions in many parts of Europe and even the Americas.

Close to my personal home in what is now the independent UN member state of Canada, 1848 was also the year the British empire at last granted so-called “responsible government” (or what we might now call self-governing parliamentary democracy) to Nova Scotia, and the so-called United Province of Canada (modern Ontario and Quebec). And this was one political change of the year that did not, as it were, finally fail or turn into something quite different.

For a more sophisticated account of the iconic uprising staged by French workers see the late Helen Castelli’s “June Days (June 22-26, 1848)” — part of a massive online Encyclopedia of Revolutions of 1848, master-minded by James Chastain in the history department at Ohio University (and also published as a hardcover book in 2004).

I New June Days in Donald Trump’s America?

The June Days of 2025 in the USA, USA are in many ways clearly different, but in others clearly relevant or at least interesting. And after the contrasting marches in Washington, DC and many other American cities (and even it seems smaller towns) on Saturday, June 14, 2025, I am finding my own mood on Democracy in America 2025 at least somewhat more upbeat than it used to be.

(Tho, I should make clear, only after absorbing the social media reporting on Twitter/X, as opposed to US TV — and especially CNN and MSNBC, which apparently do have managements concerned not to offend the present president of the United States too much …)

By way of quick explanation, I’d just note four key current outposts from my recent Twitter/X and related email adventures :

(1) A June2/3, 2025 opinion piece in the Washington Post by the “Russian-born naturalized American author, editorialist, lecturer, and military historian” Max Boot. The article was headlined “We are witnessing the suicide of a superpower … The president’s assault on science dangerously undermines America’s superpower status.” It begins with : “On June 14 — the 250th birthday of the U.S. Army and, not so coincidentally, the 79th birthday of President Donald Trump — a gaudy display of U.S. military power will parade through Washington. No doubt Trump thinks that all of the tanks and soldiers on display will make America, and its president, look tough and strong … But the planned spectacle is laughably hollow.”

(2) A June 12, 2025 “Letter from Trump’s Washington” in the New Yorker by the Harvard-educated American journalist Susan B. Glasser. Her piece was headlined “Donald Trump’s Dictator Cosplay … Just how dangerous is the President’s week of militarized theatre?” It noted that : “Over the course of just a few days, the President has ordered the military into the streets of Los Angeles—over the objections of California’s Democratic governor—to curb protests against his immigration crackdown, appeared with cheering uniformed troops at what amounted to a political rally, and planned to hold a military parade featuring the rare spectacle of tanks rolling through the streets of Washington. Trump’s martial rhetoric accompanying these militarized photo ops has portrayed a nation that is all but on the brink of war—with itself.”

(3) Staff writer Julia Wick’s June 14, 2025 Los Angeles Times interview with “Federico Finchelstein, a historian of fascism and dictatorships who chairs the history department at the New School for Social Research in New York.” Ms Wick wanted to ask Professor Finchelstein “Is America at a turning point or is it just another Saturday? … Are we at the edge of some irreparable rupture in American democracy? Or is this just another strange and absurd chapter in a long series of them?” In the end the professor “hesitated about categorizing recent events as a turning point. .. History has shown that when anti-democratic attempts are met with institutional and public resistance, they are less likely to succeed, Finchelstein said … ‘In other words, this is not the end of the story,’ he told me.”

(4) California Governor Gavin Newsom’s June 15, 2025 Tweet/Xpost headed “God Bless America.” This simply showed contrasting (or even dueling) video clips of, on the one hand, President Trump distraught at his not impressive or impressively attended June 14 Washington, DC parade, with tanks rolling by, and, on the other hand, dramatically well-attended “No Kings” protests in such American cities as Dallas, TX ; Madison, WI ; Philadelphia, PA ; Phoenix, AZ ; San Diego, CA ; and San Francisco, CA (to say nothing of giant crowds in the three largest US cities of New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago, set beside surprisingly large crowds even in such places as Little Rock, Arkansas and Boise, Idaho).

II Can the suicide of a superpower be avoided in the end?

As some somewhat skeptical observers have noted, if the same progressive enthusiasm demonstrated by the No Kings protests on June 14, 2025, across the USA, can actually be mobilized to vote with equal enthusiasm in the 2026 midterm elections, for all of the US House and one-third of the Senate, on November 3, the increasingly weird and crazy second Trump administration will only have another year and four months to do the worst it can to the real-world future of Democracy in America in the 21st century.

So … I am today, as I have noted myself, a little more upbeat about the parallel future of the free world.

And I am hoping that the meeting of G7 and other political leaders in Canada over the next few days will somehow bring us somewhat further away …

… from the actual suicide of a superpower, before the fall of 2028.