You know the moments that mean nothing will ever be the same? Like the loss of a beloved friend, unbidden. Your tears fall in the night and when you wake, you realize you feel the same way about your country.

Brimming with precious memory, but gone.

This summer's dark signs, served up by the new Supreme Court, changed America as we knew it. Three mass shootings since May, along with COVID-19 on my birthday, also delivered a knell.

I was born in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, due on the Fourth of July. I didn't make the deadline, first sign of a dissenter. My mother might have named me Liberty Belle.

I was a July girl with sunny optimism even as I became a historian. I let it go that the Founding Fathers locked women and enslaved people out of their elegant parchment. I forgave the Vietnam War the grown-ups were always talking and shouting about. As a child, I was raised on antiwar protests.

Watergate, the 2000 election deadlock and the Iraq War were outrages, but somehow did not shake my faith in the American character. It went like this: flawed, but its heart is in the right place, always advancing to a more equal union.

Growing up in Wisconsin, the heartland, and free-spirited California colored this rosy outlook. Living in London, working at CBS News, made me value the open American "can-do" spirit.

But now? President Joe Biden is genteel yet powerless to meet critical moments with urgency.

The Fourth of July mass shooting at a neighborhood parade in Illinois, claiming seven lives, is as un-American as it gets. The freakish alleged shooter then headed up to Madison, Wisconsin, where my family's village parade was set to start. The man, 21, returned to Illinois, giving up plans for a second rampage.

A school in Uvalde, Texas, and a grocery store in Buffalo, New York, saw similar scenes of bloodshed and heartbreak. Negligence was also at fault: failures by law enforcement and a 911 operator to respond properly.

So, the Senate passed a modest gun bill.

Across the street, the Supreme Court's timing could not have been worse for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The six Republicans — three old, three new — dealt body blows to the public square at the end of June.

Three younger justices named by former President Donald Trump defy precedent and public opinion, after all their pretty lies to the Senate. They are Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. The newly formed 6-3 Republican radical court transformed the landscape of American law into an Iceland glacier.

First, the court stole a constitutional right, a human right, away from women — and girls, I might add — to govern their fate and freedom. Second, they struck down a state gun law in New York more than a century old. Finally, the court curtailed the federal Environmental Protection Agency's ability to control carbon emissions.

These decisions are not just wrong. Each is deadly.

All reproductive rights experts know that seeking abortions will not cease, whether legal or not. More female death from outlawing abortion is a given. Some zealots want to prevent abortion even in cases of rape, incest and risk to the life of the woman — not the "mother."

But the John Roberts court doesn't care.

Nor do the six seem aware that gun violence is a rising epidemic all over. During the pandemic, gun ownership "shot" up. The streets of New York are not as safe as they used to be. The new mayor, Eric Adams, a former cop, is trying hard to restore a sense of normal. Let the court go out with Adams to a crime scene sometime.

Finally, the EPA decision reads as if the six Republicans have never heard of climate change burning our planet. Fossil fuels are not our friends, though the industry gives "dark money" to influence Supreme Court selection. Wildfires, floods and coastal erosion are easy dots to connect in this crisis.

Because their skins are too thin for peaceful protests, the court locked itself behind a military fence. The mob never came for them.

I skipped that family Fourth reunion in Madison. To think of the millions of moments and people we lost to COVID-19.

America, I miss you.

Jamie Stiehm may be reached at JamieStiehm.com. Follow her on Twitter @JamieStiehm. To find out more about Jamie Stiehm and other Creators Syndicate columnists and cartoonists, visit Creators.com

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