I was at a bar not far from my house when I watched the ball drop above Times Square, ringing in the New Year. On its flashing surface were the words, “America 250.” A couple of days later, I was leaving a hotel in Westchester County very early in the morning. I was going to drive my daughter to JFK so she could catch a morning flight to South America. In the hotel lobby the TV sets were replaying football highlights from the previous day. On the sidelines appeared, once again, the words “America 250.” We got in the car, started driving towards the airport. After the kid made it through ticketing and security, I waited at the airport for a bit for her text telling me she had boarded successfully. I watched my phone while I waited and learned that American special forces had swooped into Caracas and seized Venezuela’s head of state. And, of course, not long after that, I watched the videos of an ICE agent murdering Renee Goode in Minnesota. I am sure that many of you did, too. And yesterday, I listened to our President denounce Somalians in terms only the most savage racist would use, and threaten to blow up the NATO alliance by invading, of all places, Greenland, because Norway did not award him a Nobel Peace Prize.
Yay America.
None of this is funny.
This new year will be one of commemoration, the Semiquincentennial, the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Events will take place across the country. In museums and libraries large and small exhibits and events will explore the meaning of American Independence. Much of this work will be provocative, clever, inspiring and interesting.
But in Trump’s America, what does it mean to commemorate the Declaration? The Bicentennial in 1976 occurred when I was in grade school. Looking back on that year, I agree with one of my professors who described it as an orgy of self-congratulatory nonsense. Fifty years later, I wonder what we have to celebrate. I’m not in the mood.
Several years ago I attended a planning meeting for New York’s 250th celebration. I cannot remember who invited me, but the event was held at the Ganondagan State Historic Site not too far from where I live. It was part of a larger national movement to make sure that Americans, across the United States, appropriately commemorated this important event. Several speakers addressed the audience, each of them saying basically the same thing: The Declaration of Independence is the source of our nation’s highest ideals, a shining example of liberty at home and abroad, worthy of celebration. “We’re not quite there, yet,” each of the speakers said. They acknowledged, almost sheepishly, that after 250 years a considerable gap remained between American ideals and American reality. But they were in no mood to focus on that. This was going to be a celebration of all that the American Revolution accomplished. It’s going to be huge!
I found this frustrating. I raised my hand. “Was the Revolution a good thing?” A gentleman who sat a couple of rows in front of me turned and answered my question. He said that it was not job of a historian to say whether something was good or bad.
“Bullshit,” I thought.
“Penicillin,” I said. “Pol Pot. See? It’s easy.”
I did not receive any invitations to subsequent planning meetings. The Semiquincentennial is going to be a celebration of how great we are as a nation, but maybe we are not that great. And I certainly do not feel like celebrating.
Let me give you an example. Let’s say that Donald Trump decides that he wants to run for reelection in 2028. Of course, the Constitution prohibits this, but we have seen that our national charter has provided little comfort for those who believe in rights and freedom and liberty and restraints on the exercise of executive power. And whatever the Constitution says, have you seen any evidence at all that Republicans in Congress would stand up to him? What about the Supreme Court? Fat chance, right? It is entirely possible that if Trump decides he wants to run again he may be permitted to do so.
And I believe firmly that if he did run again, he would run on those issues that worked for him last time: fear and loathing towards immigrants and people of color; fear and hatred of transgendered people. These issues appeal to the sort of “low information” voters who have flocked to Trump. There are indeed a lot of low information voters out there, enough to swing an election to him. But nearly sixty percent of white Americans voted for Trump in 2016, 2020 and 2024. And although I do not doubt that they would deny strenuously that they are racist homophobes, they would vote for him anyways.
That’s a pretty sorry state of affairs. The existence of Trump, and Trumpism, makes me feel like there is a rot at the heart of our institutions and, as a historian, it seems to me that it has been there for a very long time.
It is difficult to deny the power of the language of the preamble to the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson wrote beautifully. But I am not convinced that most Americans believe that all people are created equal. The Declaration, written by a rapist enslaver who never lifted a finger to abolish that horrible institution, also denounced the “merciless Indian savages” and dangerous slaves that he believed the king had unleashed upon innocent Americans. Hatred and fear of the other is baked into our national DNA. It may have been easier to pull white Americans together around their hatred of the other than their love of liberty and freedom. Alongside those who believe fervently in the ideals of the Declaration there always has been another group that does not believe in an egalitarian and democratic republic premised on a respect for the rights of all. And those people are in charge, right now, of all three branches of the federal government and they will be in charge when the celebrations of the Semiquincentennial ramp up in a couple of months. They control much of the nation’s media, and many of the hugely popular websites where you and I waste a lot of our time.
Trump’s executive orders about the teaching of history are intended to proscribe those educators who point out this nation’s shortcomings. Show the well-researched documentary, “The 13th,” in your class and you will be in trouble. In some states discussing the 1619 Project can get a teacher fired. These orders are intended to undermine the very principle that equality matters. They are intended to defend a racist status quo. To prohibit teachers from talking about past injustices that continue into the present is to deny that those injustices exist, and to effectively dismiss and delegitimize the concerns of those who say we are not all right as a nation. I have seen the protests in the streets of the Twin Cities. I know that there are many, many people who oppose Donald Trump. Some of those taking part in the resistance are heroes. Their humor, their love of their neighbors, truly is inspiring. Some, like Renee Good, have become martyrs. But that does not alter my belief that the opening lines of the Declaration are a rhetorically bombastic lie. As a nation, I think the evidence is pretty clear that most of us do not believe that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, and that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
After 250 years we have yet to live up to those ideals, which seems to me compelling evidence that most of us never really believed in them at all.
