WASHINGTON (AP) — One of the stars of the American firmament once advised citizens of all stripes how to express their love of country. Mark Twain's long-ago words capture how Americans are stepping out this week to wish their nation a happy milestone birthday.
“Our patriotism is medieval, outworn, obsolete,” Twain wrote in 1905. “The modern patriotism, the true patriotism, the only rational patriotism, is loyalty to the Nation all the time, loyalty to the Government when it deserves it.”
In these rabidly partisan times, those who think President Donald Trump deserves their support and those who don’t are joining in celebration of the 250th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. Whether all the partying to come gives the nation a breather from disunity or aggravates it is an open question.
It's a proud and loud moment, sown with division and doubt.
Love of country comes in different flavors, of course. Some love it as is. Some love what it could become and press on with their activism and protest in pursuit of history's call for a “more perfect union." Some love what it used to be and might be once more — the underpinning of MAGA.
But overall, belief in American exceptionalism has waned. More people in the U.S. think there are better countries in the world than those who think the United States is the best. That’s according to an April poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research that found 44% endorsing the United States as just one of the best.
This is not the America of, say, Teddy Roosevelt, whose presidential library Trump is visiting in North Dakota on Wednesday. Roosevelt mirrored the brashness and ambition of a country surging in innovation, industry, influence, military muscle and spirit.
In its place is a country where the president is his own brand of brash, but millions of the people he leads wonder if it's all coming apart.
Who’s in charge here?
For the 250th, the division starts at the top, with two organizations claiming to be the one leading the commemoration and all but ignoring the other.
A decade ago, Congress created the bipartisan America250 group and charged it by law with planning the country’s local, national and international events for the 250th. Trump stepped on that with an executive order making his Freedom 250 group “the” national organization in charge.
Marquee events like the Fourth of July fireworks at the National Mall, the parade of tall ships in New York and the Great American State Fair along the National Mall are the province of Trump's Freedom 250. Musical stars who had been lined up for the splashy opener of the fair last week withdrew, concerned Trump, a Republican, would make the festivities political and very much about him.
He stepped forward to fill the void, declaring himself the “No. 1 attraction," and he delivered a speech there June 24 on American glory and his achievements. He'll headline the official July Fourth events in the capital as well, for what he called “the most spectacular TRUMP RALLY of them all."
Poems, art and a message in a bottle go underground for 250 years
America250, meantime, put together America's Block Party — a series scheduled simultaneously around the country anchored by a Fourth of July benefit concert in Los Angeles hosted by Queen Latifa, with Chris Stapleton and the Smashing Pumpkins among the acts.
By congressional mandate, America250 also sank a 900-pound (400-kilogram) time capsule in Philadelphia with items from all states and branches of government, to be pried open in 250 years.
The people of 2276 will then see a major league baseball lineup from 2026, poems from Alabama, Illinois, Kentucky and more, postcards from Colorado and Maine, beaded artwork from Montana, an Oklahoma belt buckle, a message in a vintage Coco-Cola bottle, a pocket Constitution signed by the U.S. justices, a George Washington Lord’s Prayer gold medal from Utah given out at the Wedding of the Rails event celebrating completion of the Transcontinental Railroad in 1869, and more.
In Philadelphia, where the founders signed the declaration and birthed the nation, 250 people will form the contours of the Liberty Bell in a parade with 50 marching bands and Miss America delegates, formerly called contestants, representing every state.
Ain't that America: Celebrations sprout from the grassroots, too
Though there are official events galore, it's not as if Americans, of all people, need the government to show them a good time.
In one of thousands of gatherings under the national radar, Evans, Pennsylvania, will hear the Circle of Friends Choir perform patriotic songs a cappella in an event also featuring a patriotic trivia contest and a barbershop quartet.
In Pocatello, Idaho, drag queens organized a reading of patriotic picture books for young people, including the story of Katharine Lee Bates. Bates returned from the Colorado Rockies, where the spacious skies, purple mountain majesties and fruited plains inspired her to write the poem that became “America the Beautiful.”
Twain, the scold and satirist of American government and of imperialism, shared Bates' love of his country's natural beauty. He loved the nature of its people, too — sometimes. “We glorious Americans will occasionally astonish the God that created us,” he wrote.
But a century before Make America Great Again grabbed the political zeitgeist by the lapels, he was speaking of good old days lost.
“We are called the nation of inventors," he said. “And we are. We could still claim that title and wear its loftiest honors if we had stopped with the first thing we ever invented, which was human liberty.”
