A government that demands instant obedience while concealing its identity cannot expect trust – or escape responsibility for the consequences

There are videos that do more than document a story. They alter the way we understand it.

Ronaldo Salgado spent 7 July searching for his father. At the scene of a shooting in Houston’s East End, he found his father’s work van behind police tape. Later, he saw a video online: a man had been shot in the street. Ronaldo could not identify him by sight. He recognized Lorenzo Salgado Araujo by his voice, crying for help.

America at 250 is not a finished monument, but a structure still under repair

To call this Saturday the nation’s 250th birthday is to indulge a comfortable fiction. 1776 was a declaration, not a birth certificate – and the founders wrote its claims of human equality while this nation enslaved human beings. A truer account of American freedom runs through 1619 and Juneteenth, when Americans forced the country, at last, to begin making its promises answerable to reality.

So I’m not in the mood to celebrate “America 250”, and I’m not alone. The affection is thin this summer: the Pew Research Center found that 69% of Americans were dissatisfied with the country’s direction early this year. That is not ingratitude. Sometimes a sour mood is simply clear vision.

Jamil Smith is a Guardian US columnist