The 200th anniversary of the United States brought two years of celebrations before the actual bicentennial, on July 4, 1976. Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Phillip accompanied President Ford on a tour of the land her predecessors had lost, a spectacular
parade of ships sailed from New York City to Boston, 50 wagons recreated the settlers journey on the Oregon trail (none ate each other after an unfortunate winter in the Sierras), our most prestigious LARPers reenacted Washington’s crossing of the Delaware, and Johnny Cash served as grand marshall of the July 4 parade in Washington, D.C. The city inaugurated a new Smithsonian and the city’s first subway line to mark the occasion.
So what did Americans — a little older, a little more ragged — get this year? The answer is not much of substance. The National Mall hosted a mediocre “fair” full of MAGA-adjacent companies, and on the morning of the Fourth of July hundreds of members of the white supremacist group Patriot Front marched around D.C., masked and toting Confederate flags and surrounding Black Americans on their metro commutes. Hours later, after weather delays and a brief standoff between Trump supporters and law enforcement (where have I heard that one before), the president delivered a bizarre late-night speech that did not so much commemorate the semiquincentennial as reiterate the many grievances he has with the nation he leads. Cue the July 5th fireworks, which the president bragged would be the largest in American history. Minutes into the show, the smoke grew so thick that revelers who endured the day to watch could barely make it out through the miasma.
Trump could not control the generational heat wave that is currently cooking the eastern United States, but the hollow, depressing celebrations that have defined the anniversary are entirely his fault. The president and his cronies aimed to create a diorama of Americana at the heart of the republic, but instead created a walled-off petri dish that served as a metaphor for how the best of what this nation has produced in its 250 years of existence lives entirely outside of the artificial walls of Trump’s fantasies.
This isn’t to say that the president isn’t capable of putting on a more-than-decent production when he feels like it. He did manage to get his favorite corporate sponsors together to throw him a $60 million UFC birthday fight on the lawn of the White House last month. But he simply could not care less when he himself is not the center of attention. Upon returning to office, Trump effectively neutered the bipartisan America 250 commission that had been authorized by Congress in 2016, diverting appropriated funds to Freedom 250 — his own commission stocked with MAGA loyalists. Like a child who needs his own cake at their sibling’s birthday party, the president took pains to ensure the celebrations were all about him. He hung banners with his face on them throughout D.C. (some even had spotlights to ensure he was visible even in the dark), and put his own image on passports, commemorative coins, and even National Parks passes.
The “Great American State Fair,” set up in the heart of Washington a week ahead of July 4, had the feeling of a corporate expo with a ferris wheel. The section of the National Mall between the Capitol and the Washington Monument was divided up into pavilions, where states, territories, government agencies, and corporate sponsors could show off their supposed best offerings. Squint real hard and you can maybe see the concept: an amalgamation of the Chicago World’s Fair and the quintessential American carnival. But if you were looking for funnel cake, balloon darts, tilt-a-whirls, or anything actually enjoyable, America 250 did not deliver. If you weren’t braving the line for the ferris wheel or enjoying the “high sensory experience” at the Northrop Grumman sky tunnel, the only thing to really do was bop around from stand to stand collecting cheap trinkets and brief stints in the industrial AC. Trump’s drywall-and-plaster model of his coveted D.C. arch is awe-inspiring in that it was one of the only structures on the entire mall that could provide shade from the sun. Every so often, a refitted EMS utility truck beeped urgently through the meandering throngs, carting away another unfortunate reveller who had succumbed to the heat.
The fair and some associated events were postponed or outright canceled over the weekend due to the heat and storms that blew through the region. If these troubles weren’t enough, the chaos around the National Mall added insult to injury. On a good day, the National Mall is a test of will. It’s far bigger than you think it is, and the long, arching symmetrical paths that make it beautiful to witness on a flight to or from Washington make it a bit of a pain to navigate. The throngs of people being kicked out of the fair for fear of heatstroke or a lighting strike were thus released into the larger landscape of downtown D.C. Security fences forced visitors to walk the length of the entire fair’s perimeter to cross from one row of mercifully air conditioned museums to the other. Gaggles of sweaty tourists clustered around the sparsely distributed water fountains around Constitution Gardens. It was a mess.
The situation wasn’t much better when the fair was operational. Backpacks, water bottles, and sunscreen were banned by event security. Some attendees outright discarded backpacks and umbrellas in the trash cans outside of the magnetometers. On Friday, Ohio’s fair booth was particularly popular given that the Buckeye State was handing out free tote bags and small containers of sunscreen courtesy of Ohio State University. The line for Florida’s booths stretched clear across the lawn. The giveaway? Manatee and alligator plushies. Some booths read like immersive travel agency ads. Some states — which declined to participate given the Trumpian takeover of the semiquincentennial planning commission — are just some same patio furniture in front of generic backgrounds placed there by Freedom 250 organizers where fairgoers can briefly escape the heat. Wyoming just had a beleaguered camping tent that sagged almost as much as the attendees posing in front of it for pictures.
The administration had its own booths set up, too. A father wearing a foam Hillsdale College tricorn hat and a U.S. soccer jersey, his face covered in a streaky mix of sweat and sunscreen that won’t quite absorb into his skin, peaked his head into the Department of “War” booth. He turned to his two large teenage sons — weaning blue foam tricorns of their own — and declared “this isn’t worth it.” They moved on, skipping on collecting the lanyards displaying the logos of the various cabinet agencies being gifted by the federal government’s displays.
You could go to any county fair in the nation and find a more entertaining and thoughtful production. Adding to the travesty was the reality that the whole affair was taking place surrounded by one of the greatest collections of American art, historic artifacts, and innovation in the world at the Smithsonian museums. Instead of a curated partnership highlighting the wealth of the nation’s history amid the rides and deep-fried fare of a classic American fairground, travelers were instead given the opportunity to register for a Truth Social account, or enter a “marriage retreat” raffle.
In the end, America 250 was a papier mache and printed vinyl monument to the greed and narcissism of one man. In the buildings surrounding the fair rested the bones of mammoths, the skulls of the great American bison, the command modules that took man to the moon, the original star-spangled banner that was flown over Fort McHenry during the Battle of Baltimore, and the art of Mary Cassatt. The stools of the Greenboro lunch counter and the red sweater worn by Mr. Rogers, the shackles of slaves brought in the bellies of ships across the Atlantic, and the tophat of President Abraham Lincoln. The wealth of this nation surrounded the heated purgatory that of Trump’s America 250. It was a glimpse of what could have been.
Just a few yards away from the fair’s entrance was the National Gallery, where an exhibition commemorating the anniversary opened with four paintings by the Anglo-American artist Thomas Cole, titled The Voyage of Life. The third painting — Manhood — was the most striking.
“Trouble is characteristic of the period of Manhood. In Childhood there is no cankering care; in Youth no despairing thought. It is only when experience has taught us the realities of the world, that we lift from our eyes the golden veil of early life; that we feel deep and abiding sorrow,” Cole wrote in his accompaniment to the piece.
The painting depicts dark clouds and turbulent waters around the imploring figure of a man in a flimsy looking little boat. It’s a fitting visual for the state of the nation, the golden glow of our youth behind us, the test of our mettle and will to overcome what is ahead.
Now feels like a moment in time when the best this nation has to give may have already been given. But if there’s one thing that cannot be denied about the president’s miserable party is that once you step outside its confines — when you manage to find your way to the columns of Lincoln, the atrium of the Museum of Natural History, or the somber heart of the Museum of African American History — it becomes clear that the only thing that will ever bring this nation to its knees is its own acceptance of the unacceptable.
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