Imagine spending your entire life sharing a birthday with the United States, building up decades of warm fuzzy feelings about fireworks and cake and the whole patriotic package, and then Donald Trump shows up and ruins it. That is, more or less, exactly what has happened to a group of Americans born on the Fourth of July, who told The Guardian this week that they are greeting the country's 250th anniversary with something between deep ambivalence and outright refusal to participate.
Happy 250th. Here's Your Complimentary Existential Crisis.
The United States turns 250 years old today. Two hundred and fifty years since a group of slaveholding colonists wrote one of the most aspirational political documents in human history and then immediately started arguing about whether they really meant all of it. The Trump administration is marking the occasion with a series of events across the National Mall, which, depending on your political persuasion, is either a stirring tribute or a hostage situation.
For most Americans, July 4th is a long weekend of burgers and bad decisions. For the people who were actually born on this day, it has always been something a little more loaded. Your birthday gets absorbed into the national party every single year. The fireworks are for you, sort of. The whole country is technically celebrating, kind of. It is a weird and specific joy that a very specific group of people have spent their lives either loving or grudgingly accepting.
This year, according to The Guardian, a significant number of those people would like a refund.
The Shakespearean Birthday Party Nobody Wanted
Bill Combs, a 74-year-old retired professor living near Bryce Mountain in Virginia, put it in terms that would make an English professor weep with pride and a MAGA supporter demand his pension be revoked. The Guardian reports he described this year's anniversary as a Shakespearean "tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." He added that the whole thing has "cheapened the meaning of 'America.'" For a guy who says he spent decades happily sharing his birthday with a national holiday, that is a pretty brutal turn.
Craig Allen, a 71-year-old retired research scientist in Connecticut, told The Guardian he genuinely enjoyed the 1976 bicentennial celebrations. He watched the tall ships in Philadelphia and felt proud. This year, he said the milestone "is difficult for me" and that the "gold plating and cheap gaudy events" make him want to head for the woods. Which, honestly, sounds like a reasonable coping mechanism for the current political moment regardless of whether it's your birthday.
Jo Haemer, a 73-year-old goldsmith in Portland who was born in Germany to American parents during the Cold War, was even more direct about the comparison. The Guardian reports she said flat out that "the 200-year bicentennial was more meaningful than 250. Especially since the onslaught of the corrupt Trump administration." She usually bakes some pies and has friends over. This year the vibe is apparently a little different.
The Part Where Trump Made It About Trump
Here is the thing about throwing a 250th birthday party for an entire country: it requires at least some pretense that you are celebrating the country rather than yourself. Brian O'Reilly, a 77-year-old retired journalist on the New Jersey shore, told The Guardian that he and his identical twin brother grew up with a tripled sense of being special: twins, born on Independence Day, citizens of this shining star of a nation. The Vietnam War dented that. Then came Trump.
"It was more fun to share a birthday with the USA when it was seen as this shining star sixty and seventy years ago," O'Reilly told The Guardian. "I'm not a big fan of Donald Trump and his self-centered celebration designed to focus attention on himself this year takes some of the joy out of it all." A retired journalist delivering that verdict in a single clean sentence. Respect the craft.
Maria Ashot, a 69-year-old writer and Harvard graduate currently based in Brussels and Barcelona, told The Guardian she has always identified deeply with the principles in the Declaration of Independence. This year, she is watching Trump "appropriate" those ideals while what she calls his "utter lack of class and sophistication" produces what she described as "a mass brawl at the White House he has half-demolished." Her conclusion: "I am not celebrating with him." Three words. Extremely final.
What Happens When Patriotism Gets Stolen
Bertram P. Dowd, a graduate student in Arizona whose father was also born on July 4th, gave The Guardian the clearest articulation of what may be the central political problem of this particular moment. He said he wants to enjoy the 250th anniversary festivities. He wants to feel good about the cultural commemorations. But, he told The Guardian, "the trappings of patriotism in general have been so thoroughly captured by Trump and MAGA that I want nothing to do with what's actually being done for the anniversary."
That is not fringe thinking. That is a direct description of a deliberate political strategy: monopolize the flags, the anthems, the founding documents, and the fireworks until your opponents feel unwelcome at their own country's birthday party. It works whether you intend it or not. Dowd's plan for the day, per The Guardian, is to get a hamburger and stay home. Which, in its own way, is the most American possible response to feeling alienated from America.
A retired university employee in Arlington, Virginia, told The Guardian the anniversary felt "complicated," pointing to what she described as white elites successfully selling a white supremacy bargain to poor white voters to prevent class solidarity across racial lines. Heavy stuff for a birthday. But she is not wrong, and the fact that a 250th anniversary celebration is generating this level of reflection says something about where the country actually is right now.
The Dingo Take
There is something genuinely poignant, and also genuinely funny in a bleak way, about a group of people who spent their entire lives getting their birthdays eaten by a national holiday only to discover that the national holiday has now been eaten by a reality television host with a grudge and a flagpole obsession. These are not young radicals. They are retirees in their 60s and 70s who remember the bicentennial and the tall ships and the version of this country that, whatever its actual sins, at least aspired to something beyond the guy at the top of the ticket.
The administration would tell you these people are just bitter lefties who hate America. But a 74-year-old retired professor quoting Macbeth at a fireworks show is not a radical. A twin who grew up proud of his birthday and his country and now watches it get strip-mined for brand content is not an extremist. These are people who loved the idea and are watching someone burn the furniture for warmth.
The 250th anniversary of the United States is happening right now, today, and the people who share a birthday with it are getting hamburgers alone at home or hiding in the woods. That is not a protest movement. That is just grief. And the fact that the most patriotic thing some of these Americans feel they can do on Independence Day is refuse to participate in the official celebration tells you everything you need to know about where we are at 250.
