Two Hundred Fifty Years of America - And a President Who Mistakes the Night for Himself

There are evenings when a country looks into a mirror and is no longer certain whether it still recognizes itself. The Fourth of July this year was one of those evenings. America celebrated its two hundred fiftieth birthday, the anniversary of the Declaration that began everything in 1776, and had every reason to celebrate on a grand and dignified scale. Instead, shortly after eleven o'clock that night, a president stood on a half emptied stage before a thinned out crowd and spoke of the crowning achievement of human history. Between that claim and the picture that actually unfolded that evening lay a gulf that revealed more about the condition of the country than any speech ever could.

The day had begun differently. At noon in Philadelphia, church bells rang at the very hour when the Continental Congress approved the Declaration of Independence in 1776, while reenactors dressed as Minutemen marched across the grass of Independence Mall. In New York, a flotilla of historic schooners and sloops sailed up the Hudson River. On board one of those vessels was an edition of the Boston Gazette dated July 22, 1776, which had once printed the full text of the Declaration of Independence. In Charlottesville, Virginia, seventy five people from around the world became American citizens at Monticello, the estate of Thomas Jefferson. In Los Angeles, a park filled for a celebration that was to continue throughout the entire weekend. These were the images of a country that still remembers itself, its origins, and its promises. They were images that came from below, from society itself, and that is precisely where their dignity lay.

In Washington, however, the celebration became hostage to the weather and to a determination that refused to be instructed by the weather. A storm moved in, and the Secret Service was forced to clear the National Mall for more than two hours, declare an emergency, and remove people from the place where they had intended to celebrate. It had rained throughout the day. It had been hot. There had been long waits at the security checkpoints. By the time the crowd was finally allowed back, it had noticeably shrunk. The seating areas, which had never been completely full even during the daytime heat, now remained largely empty. More than half of the seats in the special guest section directly in front of the stage were unoccupied.

Trump, however, wanted to speak, on that day and no other. Next week would not do, he said. This was the big day. There is something revealing in that determination. A country celebrates a date because that date stands for something, for an idea, for a break with arbitrary power. One man, however, celebrates himself, and for him the date becomes a backdrop. When he finally began after eleven o'clock, he thanked the crowd for returning to celebrate with him. For two and a half centuries, he said, the American Republic had stood as the crowning achievement of human history, the most incredible nation ever to exist on Earth, and today America was in a better position than ever before. These are words that allow no contradiction, and for that very reason they invite it.

The speech, which Trump had announced would be very long, was over after about thirty five minutes, and within those thirty five minutes the entire method of his politics revealed itself. He began with history, with the flags that had been brought onto the stage. One, he said, had flown on D-Day. Another had rested on Abraham Lincoln's coffin. He brought veterans onto the stage and had them salute the historic flags, and for a moment it seemed as though the evening might yet become what it should have been - a tribute to history. But that moment did not last. Trump does not use history to honor it. He uses it to place himself among those who made it.

Trump: "The communists do not stand a chance. We do not want communists in our country."

The speech soon turned away from the past and toward the enemies of the present. Trump turned to communism, a term that the White House has transformed over the past several weeks into a new weapon against the president's political opponents. We do not want communists in our country, he said, and the crowd cheered. Communism had raised its ugly head here in America once again, he declared. It was like a cancer that had to be cut out, cut out quickly. It is language that demands attention because it no longer regards a political opponent as an opponent, but as a disease, as something that must be removed. Anyone who speaks this way has already abandoned the very idea of democracy, because democracy lives through its opponents, not through their elimination. The Stars and Stripes had already consigned the hammer and sickle to oblivion once before, Trump added, and if necessary, America would do so again.

He mixed those attacks with what remained of the actual celebration, and that mixture itself became the message. He brought the astronauts of NASA's Artemis II mission onto the stage, the men and women who had recently traveled farther from Earth than any human beings before them. They had become very famous, Trump said. Everyone had been watching. Even looking toward the stars became, for him, proof of attention, proof of an audience, proof of himself. He then turned to other flags, revived past military victories, and placed his own military operations among them as though they belonged in the very same gallery of history. We used the military a little, he said, before claiming that the entire Iranian Navy had been sunk in a war he began in February and has still failed to bring to an end. It is a sentence that carries within it the entire tragedy of this presidency. A war becomes a flag. A death becomes a footnote. An unfinished catastrophe becomes a line in a birthday speech.

Trump also did not leave domestic politics untouched. He used the stage to promote his controversial voter identification law, the so called SAVE America Act, which remains stalled in Congress. There would no longer be mail in voting, he predicted, except for a few exceptions such as illness or disability. One has to picture that moment. A president stands on the birthday of the world's oldest modern democracy and announces that access to voting will become more restricted. The celebration of freedom becomes an advertising platform for limiting it. And the audience, pressing into the aisles, climbing onto chairs, and recording every line with raised cell phones, applauded almost every sentence. We are all created in the image of one almighty God, Trump said, and a communist would never say that. The crowd laughed and applauded. His remarks about the Second Amendment and religion drew the loudest applause.

Trump: "And as our Declaration of Independence says, we are all made in the image of one almighty God. And a communist would never say that."

It is worth lingering on that applause for a moment, because it is the real story of the evening. The front rows, the section reserved for honored guests, remained largely empty. Behind them, however, hundreds of people stood packed as close to the stage as possible, stretching their necks, recording the speech, and cheering. It was an image of division that could hardly have been staged more clearly. The reserved seats of order stood empty. The ranks of enthusiasm were full. An America that no longer celebrates together, but one in which a relatively small group, all the louder because of it, cheers for a single man while everyone else either waits in the rain or never came at all.

Around that stage, however, the real country continued along its own contradictory path. In New York, one celebration appeared to derail when a fire broke out on the Brooklyn Bridge. It was later extinguished without any injuries being reported. In the western United States, several communities canceled their fireworks displays out of fear that flying sparks could ignite wildfires. Along the East Coast, dangerous heat disrupted planned celebrations. And in Washington itself, organizers prepared the massive display that was meant to crown Trump's evening. More than eight hundred fifty thousand fireworks over forty minutes, a spectacle many times larger than any previous Independence Day celebration. So large that the National Park Service feared it could leave dangerous air pollution hanging over downtown Washington for hours. The word the agency used was hazardous. It fits as an unintended commentary on the entire evening. A country that fills its own sky with smoke for forty minutes and cannot breathe afterward is not celebrating. It is numbing itself.

Perhaps this is the thought that reaches beyond the events of this Fourth of July. A birthday is an opportunity to remember, and remembrance means confronting one's own origins, including the promises that were made and never fulfilled. The Declaration of Independence was a document intended to limit power, written against a king who believed that authority resided within his own person. Two hundred fifty years later, a man stands in Washington who benefits from the achievements of that document while governing against its spirit, who wants to narrow access to voting, who describes his political opponents as a disease, and who turns war into a trophy. The true anniversary did not take place on his stage. It took place in Charlottesville, where seventy five people from around the world became citizens of this country in the home of the man who helped write the Declaration. It took place on the Hudson River, where an old newspaper carried the words of 1776 across the water. It took place everywhere that people remembered what America wanted to be before it began confusing itself with a single man.

In the end, the fireworks rose above Washington, larger than ever before, and for forty minutes the explosions were so loud that they drowned out the silence behind them. But the silence was there. It was there in the empty seats, in the cleared grounds, in the thinned out crowd, in a country that could no longer quite come together on its own birthday. America has turned two hundred fifty years old, and that is a great and honorable age for a republic. The only question this evening left unanswered is whether the country still understands that age as a responsibility, or merely as the backdrop for the self celebration of a man who mistakes the night for himself. The answer will not be given on a stage. It will be given where people continue to watch after the last firework has faded and the smoke settles over the city.