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Properly angered Americans balk at being expected to ‘celebrate’ America 250 when it is glaring obvious ‘the experiment’ is over. {The Guardian 3 July}
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jul/03/250th-anniversary-readers-reflect
It is all over but the shouting, and the shouting has only just begun. One telling passage, FTA:
“What is there to celebrate? Who still deeply holds allegiance to this country? … We’ve pedestalized the absence of thought or empathy for the last 250 years, and I’m not optimistic enough to expect us to hit 500,” Callisto said. “We look ridiculous, sound inane, and act insane in the global theatre.”
I firmly disagree that we have been completely awful for the entirety of the nation's existence, for Americans have done some incredibly great things in this world over the long haul and have advanced humanity in a myriad of ways. We have also committed great evils, of course. All things considered, I grew up proud to be an American and had no doubt that we were living better than any nation in the world. That was in the 1980s and 1990s.
Today, however, it is obvious that we are no longer especially exceptional in terms of standard of living, and indeed are falling further behind. We are, in many respects, ridiculous, inane, and insane, like a rabid old dog that needs to be put down. Something fundamental began to change after the 9/11 attacks, and we are not the same country or people we were before that day. Nor are we ever getting back what we once had; the world hath changed and moved on.
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There is scant little left for America to export. Just look at how people are salivating at this moment over the marriage of a completely pedestrian, milquetoast pop singer and a retired, beefy football player who looks as though he would be working as a trashman or janitor were it not for sport. Not exactly Charles and Diana, is it? We are so bloody mediocre now that the culture itself feels exhausted. Look around: young people are listening to the same music their parents and grandparents did because there is precious little of value replacing it. Society is not quite dead, but it is running on fumes.
If this divide truly is irreparable — and I increasingly believe that it is — then the idea of a ‘national divorce’, typically advanced by the nationalist populists responsible for Trump, ought no longer be dismissed out of hand. At some point, all sides may be forced to confront the possibility that the United States has become less a nation than a collection of mutually hostile peoples sharing the same borders.
πͺπ #QueSeraSera π ¨ π
