What makes America 250 feel different from the bicentennial | Opinion
I still remember when my dad took me and my sister to downtown Rochester, New York, to see the fireworks on July 4, 1976. I was only 5 years old, but even then I intuited the significance of the “bicentennial.”
Signs of celebration were everywhere: mugs, plates, coins, T-shirts, posters, commemorative cups at the ballgames, ads in the newspapers.
It seemed everyone was celebrating America’s 200th birthday.
America celebrated, even though the country was fresh off a presidential resignation because of Watergate, the worst presidential scandal in U.S. history (despite Vice President J.D. Vance’s recent downplaying of it). The pain and divisions of the Vietnam War were still fresh, and the country was still recovering from an oil crisis, high unemployment and stifling inflation.
But there was a sense that we were trying to solve our nation’s problems: the Great Society legislation, the civil rights movement, the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, the Voting Rights Act.
As we celebrate America’s 250th birthday, it just doesn’t feel the same this time around.
First of all, “bicentennial” is just a lot catchier and easier to say than semiquincentennial.
The year 1976 even looks a lot like 1776. But 2026 doesn’t seem to have an obvious relation.
Are we still a ‘shining city on a hill’?
More significantly, though, rather than trying to become that “shining city on the hill,” as President Ronald Reagan famously said in his farewell State of the Union address in 1988, today we seem to be going in the opposite direction.
Voting rights are under attack, based on the big lie that the 2020 presidential election was rigged. (The Save America Act does much more than just require photo ID.) The Trump administration is committing what some legal experts call extrajudicial killings in open seas of alleged drug traffickers.
The U.S. is making enemies of our friends, threatening to annex Canada and take over Greenland, and exacting tariffs based on questionable logic and math. We started a war with Iran under suspect motives and with little good result, killing innocent schoolchildren along the way.
Trump stopped illegal border crossings. OK, but it’s been done without a real solution to legal immigration, which our country still needs, and it’s been done so poorly, violently and maliciously, it’s hard to recognize a shining city on the hill when masked federal “agents” are roaming our streets, threatening anyone standing in their way and even killing at least three innocent citizens.
The U.S. cut federal funding for public media, arts, scientific research and international aid.
Hundreds of convicts from the Jan. 6 riot were pardoned and are now loose on our streets. Pardons have been granted to tax cheats and fraudsters.
The president and his family have profited financially from his position, raising legitimate concerns that he’s violating the emoluments clause of the Constitution.
Co-opting patriotism and the American flag
But, you say, the One Big Beautiful Bill brought tax relief to Americans! But study after study and analysis after analysis show the benefits are going largely to the wealthy, further exacerbating one of our nation’s greatest problems: wealth inequality. Not to mention it continues to increase the federal budget deficit and add to the $37 trillion national debt, all while cutting benefits for those in need.
Attacking the media, spreading disinformation, going after political enemies, coercing and threatening universities are all part of the playbook.
The America 250 celebration feels manufactured, contrived, forced even, like an authoritarian regime mandating a celebration of the nation, more befitting in a place like North Korea than the United States.
It also has been co-opted, just like the American flag, by the MAGA movement and Trump supporters.
Fake patriotism
The America 250 celebration was established by Trump shortly after he was elected, so it makes sense that those who are celebrating are also celebrating Trump. But it seems like the only ones who are celebrating America 250 are Trump supporters.
And it’s a fake patriotism. It’s a patriotism based on a brand of toxic, arrogant, in-your-face, bullying, exclusionary combat politics, like a pickup truck parade with bullhorns and tattered, oversized American flags flying from the beds.
The UFC fights on the White House lawn are emblematic of it.
The unilateral destruction of the White House East Wing and taxpayer-funded construction of a gaudy ballroom is emblematic of it.
The incompetent painting of the reflecting pool and consequent failure is emblematic of it.
The poorly attended, tacky Great American State Fair is emblematic of it.
It’s also a patriotism that doesn’t accept criticism, exposing just how fragile it is, when we are unable to acknowledge the ugly chapters of our history, such as stealing land from Native Americans, our shameful history of slavery, Jim Crow laws and ongoing racism, misogyny and homophobia. National parks signs have been scrubbed of anything that cast America in “a negative light.”
If you dare suggest that America has flaws or committed egregious acts, you must be un-American.
Honor the tenets that made America great
Don’t take this litany of complaints the wrong way. I’m as patriotic as any American. The Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution are two of the greatest political documents ever written, and I constantly marvel at the genius and forethought of our founding fathers. Our republic, if we can keep it, is the greatest system ever created and has led to our success as a nation.
This litany of complaints comes from a deep sense of patriotism. It comes with a sadness that the things that made this country great are being eroded, not least among them the notion of checks and balances. It’s been heartbreaking to watch once-respected men like Sen. Mike Crapo and Rep. Mike Simpson fall hopelessly into that category of good men who do nothing to allow evil to triumph. Their acquiescence to Trump has been staggering, the abdication of their responsibilities demoralizing.
Yes, let’s celebrate America, the declaration of freedom and independence and the forging of a nation that became the greatest country on Earth. But we can do so while acknowledging the sins of our past and condemning the hate, corruption and ugliness that we’re witnessing today.
The American flag will fly outside my house, just as it does every Fourth of July, in honor of those tenets that made America great: the belief that the government is of, for and by the people and not oligarchs, kings or dictators, and the belief in the protection of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness — for everyone, not just a few.
My main concern today is what our great democratic experiment will look like for the tricentennial.
Scott McIntosh is the communities editor and columnist for the Idaho Statesman. You can email him at smcintosh@idahostatesman.com or call him at 208-377-6202. Sign up for his free weekly email newsletter The Idaho Way.
