This had been, until Trump, the basic operating principle of those who held the reins of American power. The goal was to convince people of the ideological coherence and moral goodness of their country. But Trump has never sold anything except himself. So, today, there’s the ballroom, the arch, his face on our passports, and the two hundred fifty–dollar bill. Trump has no interest in enjoining us to feel a part of something greater than ourselves, in part because Trump doesn’t believe there is anything greater than himself. The semiquincentennial’s theme of a “Great American State Fair” may sound like something out of the past, an event that gathered Americans together in the earnest pursuit of fried Oreos and obscene fireworks displays, until you realize that Trump has planned his semiquincentennial program with Freedom 250, a public-private initiative run through the White House, not America 250, the official organization authorized through Congress. America 250 had already planned similar events for this year, dubbed “America’s Block Party,” enlisting artists such as Mary J. Blige, Chris Stapleton, Smashing Pumpkins, Anthony Ramos, and Chaka Khan. Trump and Freedom 250 went forward with their own competing version, and the “Great American State Fair,” molded in the administration’s agenda, has been sparsely attended. They booked acts like Young MC and Bret Michaels, but both eventually pulled out, and left only one man standing: Vanilla Ice.
And so there will be no Freedom Train this year. The American Freedom Train Foundation 250 attempted to bring it back, but couldn’t secure any corporate sponsors. There’s a Freedom Plane, a technologically advanced version, but far narrower in ambition; only eight cities with ten documents, and people can’t board the plane itself. There have been Freedom Trucks, supposedly, but I haven’t seen or heard tell of one rolling into town. The American people’s best bet to feel the noble expanse of freedom and to semiquincentennially celebrate their interconnectedness is through US Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy’s reality show, The Great American Road Trip, in which he takes his large family across the country’s highways and byways to various historic landmarks. Though even that, slated to premiere in June, has yet to drop any episodes.
I thought there would be . . . more. More flags, more parades, more fireworks, more minuteman cosplay, more Washington and Jefferson and Adams, more hootin’ and hollerin’. More bullshit. I was ready for the bullshit; I’ve been primed for the bullshit my whole life. Perhaps the view is just obscured from where I live, inside the socialist republic of Mamdanistan, awash in the orange and blue of our NBA champions, but I thought there would be bigger and brighter reminders of the 250th than the window display of the Chase Bank on Flatbush Avenue.