Dreading the Semiquincentennial
The Regime Wants to Shove a Lot of BS Down Our Throats
It’s not like we don’t have enough to worry about right now. Authoritarian take-over at home, war abroad, and a set of “policies” that are evidently aimed at ruining countless lives here and around the world for years to come.
Yet I still have time for the relatively petty. The events of this past weekend - the military parade to celebrate Trump’s birthday (and the U.S. Army’s) and the No Kings day of defiance - have me looking forward to this time next year with dread. Not least because Trump’s semiquincentennial organizing committee, America250, was involved in the Army’s 250th. Have a quick look at America250’s website to get an idea of what this is about:
The corporate sponsors are an odd group, including Palantir, UFC, and Coinbase (Amazon is especially infuriating). Trump has declared that he wants his bizarre Valhalla of heroic marble statues ready to inspire Americans by July 4, 2026, though it seems there are not enough hack sculptors to churn out his gimcrack statuary by then. And here is the main photo on America250’s home page.
What’s not to like?
In case you missed it, Trump referred to the semiquincentennial when he spoke at Arlington National Cemetery on Memorial Day earlier this year:
“We’re going to have a big, big celebration, as you know, 250 years,” said Trump, pointing also to the U.S.-hosted World Cup and Olympics that will fall during his second term. "I missed that four years [after the 2000 election] and now look what I have. I have everything. Amazing the way things work out," Trump said. “God did that. I believe that, too.”
I have a sneaking suspicion that the Trump Regime will screw up the World Cup, but that is another discussion.
Like most of my readers (I suspect), I am old enough to remember America’s bicentennial celebration in 1976. I turned 18 that year, so I had grown up through the turbulent decade that had preceded the bicentennial. The assassinations of MLK and RFK. Urban riots. The Tet Offensive, the Pentagon Papers and the whole Vietnam and Indochina debacle. The massacre of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics. The oil crisis. Watergate. The list could go on. On the positive side, the decade’s ledger was pretty sparse: the Moon Landing (especially that), the Black Power salute at the Mexico City Olympics, Mark Spitz at the Munich Olympics, the Beatles’ Abbey Road and Nixon’s resignation (my personal list).
Despite - or perhaps because of - these wrenching national experiences, the bicentennial in 1976 was glorious. That’s how I remember it. Our national healing had begun. We had pulled our last troops from Vietnam (I watched the helos lift the last Marines from our Saigon embassy as an exchange student in Germany). A year earlier, Nixon had left the White House in disgrace aboard Army One. In 1976, we celebrated our glorious history with a sense of honest humility. Our great hero of the Olympics that year, in Montreal, was not an American - it was the Romanian gymnast Nadia Comeneci. We were genuinely reconnecting with ourselves, maybe even a bit introspective - something that doesn’t come easy to Americans. We were trying to grow together after a decade of falling apart. We were daring to dream again.
Back in 1976, American mass culture was still essentially monolithic. Three TV networks, Top 40 radio, daily newspapers, lots of popular movies. It all took a patriotic turn focused on history, filled with music and fireworks and national parks and tall ships in New York Harbor. As I recall, that was it. It was our country - it seemed we all shared it somehow - and we threw a birthday party for ourselves.
That is not what is coming next year.
Today, as in 1976, we can also look back on a turbulent decade. The Afghanistan fiasco, the COVID pandemic, George Floyd (and so many others) and Black Lives Matter, the January 6 insurrection, the election and then re-election of Trump. Those events have left us bitterly divided and have brought out (mostly) the worst aspects of American national culture.
We are not healing. Instead, one side - the Trump Regime - is seeking to take control of our civic and cultural institutions to impose a nativist, nationalistic and bowdlerized version of America’s past, present and future. What they have in mind for next year, it seems, is a celebration of the Trump Regime itself, drawing on corporate money in a manifestation of authoritarianism that is more than just symbolic. It is shaping up as a triumph of MAGA, an assertion of authoritarian control of American culture. A Leni Riefenstahl-style triumph.
James B. Greenberg’s Substack is the best source I know for interpreting the intersection of culture and power in today’s America. Here is a link to one of his best recent posts:
So what do we do? I love this country and its history. But I don’t feel like joining Trump’s party. I would like to celebrate the real qualities and achievements of our 250 years - not the ones that the Trump Regime seems determined to emphasize, and certainly not Trump himself in any way. Perhaps there is a No Kings-style way to mark our semiquincentennial, another split-screen moment. But I don’t think I want that - not on the Fourth of July.
Maybe the best thing to do is just celebrate quietly, locally, and ignore Trump’s bid for cultural autocracy. “Semiquincentennial” is an ugly word, hard to remember and pronounce. Maybe I will just ignore it. Grind my teeth and stay away from the Soviet-esque “official celebration”. Just like last Saturday, when Trump, Melania, Hegseth, a few dragooned soldiers, a squeaky tank and Palantir celebrated Trump’s birthday in Washington, DC. Almost nobody showed up. Perhaps that would do. July 4th is July 4th, in 2026 just like 2025.
Resist, rinse, repeat.