America at 250: A Tale of Two Celebrations
People want to come to a tailgate, not a country club.
I find myself constantly fighting against despair because of the state of the country. It feels like there are two stories happening where the U.S. is in decline while the rest of the world moves on. But these past few weeks have been a reminder of why it’s important to find joy where we can, and not fall into the idea that America is only one thing.
The U.S. is playing host this year to the 2026 World Cup along with Canada and Mexico. FIFA, the organization behind the World Cup, is deeply corrupt. And yet, the product they create is unifying in its simplicity. You root for your country’s team. These celebrations across the continent where people from different nations come to compete, celebrate, and commiserate, have led to emotionally rich scenes.
Meanwhile, the “Great American State Fair” in Washington, D.C. is a ghost town where performers comically outnumber attendees.
As we reach the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, America is doing…not great. Trump’s reelection unleashed a torrent of predictably awful outcomes from authoritarian violence, concentration camps, economic decline, scientific retreat, the gutting of governmental capacity, and the diminishment of the country’s international sway. This all to furnish the ego of a thin-skinned dimwit who thinks that being President is the same as being a king, and that the country now belongs to him.
These two celebrations both exist in public spaces, and they both signify a world where America is in decline but a sense of global awareness and camaraderie is ascendant. Thirty years ago, soccer was a joke, and now Americans cheer on MLS and other international soccer organizations. These fans aren’t ignorant of the business of sport, but they also get swept up in the passion and excitement that creates a universal sense of shared humanity. Whether you’re from Canada or Cabo Verde, you can get excited watching a guy try to kick a ball into a net. We are communing with people, which is a far cry from the lonely, isolated, and resentful vision of America’s leaders at this moment.
These leaders’ vision of America is shaped by the confines of the country club lifestyle. Trump and his sycophants love the idea of a chintzy little enclave where they can keep out undesirables. They abhor anything that’s public-facing because they despise the public. If something is free to all, like citizenship for those born here, it is not unifying but worthless. Their push for the repeal of birthright citizenship is a way of turning the U.S. population into one not of civic contribution but of membership where they—by virtue of wealth and skin color—can decline or revoke inclusion if you break not the law, but whatever arbitrary boundaries they choose to set.
Is it any wonder that the Great American State Fair is so empty? That people who cannot conceive of America as culturally vast and wonderfully diverse couldn’t produce anything outside a Ferris wheel and a handful of no-name performers?
There’s nothing worth having behind the gate. It’s a collection of mediocrities who get high on their own supply of gutter racism and butchered faith. They are defined not by joy and discovery, but by their bottomless resentments against anyone who doesn’t scrape, grovel, and say “thank you” for making everything more expensive and modern life more precarious.
It’s amusing to poke fun at the emptiness of their project, made manifest by the sad display of the Great American State Fair. Trump and his failsons have grifted billions of dollars for nothing. There’s nothing they want beyond the love they’ll never receive. They grift because it makes them feel powerful. There’s nothing inside, and their ideal America reflects that emptiness: No one is happy, but at least there’s no one there to mock them.
Outside, in the real world, we continue to embrace the richness of diversity. The World Cup has served as a balm, and a way to show other countries that we are not as hollow and craven as our leaders. Even our outsized consumerism becomes delightfully mystifying as we perplex visitors with Walmarts and bottomless soda refills. As much as Trump and his adherents have tried to shut us all off from the world, the world is too big and too vital.
This doesn’t mean that America bounces back immediately from Trumpism or that we reverse our decline. But one of the lessons of the past years is that America is not the whole world, as much as some of its blinkered leaders would wish it to be so. And when you look beyond its shores, you see a richness that no petty tyrant can contain. Let them spit their enmities in their cloistered, pathetic existence. The world at large will drown them out.
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