The Dictatorship
How the left ought to approach the anti-Israel right
The American right is mired in a civil war over Israel.
Over the past year, a number of prominent right-wing pundits and activists have broken from President Donald Trump over his support for Israel and condemned Israeli policy in Gaza as mass murder. This dispute is reaching new heights since the anti-Israel sector of the right — led by right-wing pundit Tucker Carlson and including former Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, right-wing podcaster and conspiracist Candace Owens, former National Counterterrorism Center Director Joe Kent, and white supremacist livestreamer Nick Fuentes — has accused Trump of betraying his own MAGA movement by, in their view, allowing Israel to drag the U.S. into the disastrous U.S.-Israeli war in Iran. “I hate this war and the direction that the U.S. government is taking,” Carlson said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal published last weekend, while accusing the administration of failing to “act on behalf of its own citizens.”
Much of the pro-Palestinian left is watching with curiosity and amazement. At the peak of its energy objecting to U.S. backing for Israel’s genocide in Gazathe left-wing pro-Palestinian movement was overwhelmingly opposed by the right and sidelined by the Democratic Partyquashed by university administrators and silenced by a shameful round of cancel culture within liberal institutions. Now it watches as the right is riven by its own internal split over support for Israel, with the anti-Israel tendency spearheaded by the most powerful right-wing pundit in America and buoyed by widespread defection from a pro-Israel status quo among Republicans under age 50.
Carlson’s intensifying criticism of Israel does not stem from some kind of new, leftist-inspired commitment to universal human rights.
The pro-Palestinian left — which includes swathes of the Arab American community, movement advocates, democratic socialists, progressive students and a segment of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party — is in a strange position. Some leftists are pondering whether Carlson and his faction are in fact an unlikely ally to the pro-Palestinian movement.
Online, this discussion often takes the form of debating how to respond to Carlson saying humanizing things about Palestinians that can make him sound quite a lot like a leftist when engaging with the mainstream press. Over and over again, this discussion centers on whether one must “hand it to Tucker Carlson” or one of his allies, or whether their seeming correctness on one issue deserves “credit” or should become a basis on which they are “liked.”
But these are the wrong questions. They consider the issue through the cultural lens of whether it is appropriate to applaud. Instead, the left should be asking why Carlson et al. believe what they do — and then use that understanding to form judgments about political action.
Doing this makes clear that the anti-Israel right is not committed in any meaningful sense to Palestinian liberation and is not a friend of the left. That doesn’t mean there aren’t opportunities for strategic partnership across the aisle at the level of legislation in Washington. But this is a hardly a case of common cause or grounds for a conjoining of movements.
That’s because Carlson’s intensifying criticism of Israel does not stem from some kind of new, leftist-inspired commitment to universal human rights or egalitarianism. Rather, it can be traced back to the same right-wing white nationalist worldview that he’s held for years, which constantly deploys antisemitic tropes to insinuate that Jews constitute a threat to ideal Western civilization — and that the fundamental problem with Israel is its Jewishness.
Carlson is a staunch advocate of “great replacement” theorya concept that holds that shadowy Jewish financiers are behind porous borders and the replacement of “native” Americans with immigrants. He ascribes to Israel “an Eastern view” that is “totally incompatible with Christianity and Western civilization.” He holds the view that Israel has a secret plan to demolish the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem and trigger a global religious war whose primary victims would be “Christian, Western, white countries.” In October he invited Fuentes — a Holocaust denier who has called Adolf Hitler “really f–––ing cool” — onto his podcast for a softball interview, during which Fuentes said “organized Jewry” undermined American cohesion. After his podcast appearance, Fuentes said in a video, “We are done with the Jewish oligarchy. We are done with the slavish surrender to Israel.”
In other words, this faction’s hostility to Israel is tied to the idea that Jews — in the U.S. and outside of it — exert an undue and corrupting influence on American life. Carlson will periodically go out of his way to condemn antisemitism and deny that he supports it, but it’s not hard to see how it animates his worldview if you examine it closely. It’s also evident when, for example, he discusses Russia and Ukraine. He describes Ukraine’s Jewish president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, as “ratlike” and a “persecutor of Christians,” and says he is “more sympathetic” to warmongering Russian President Vladimir Putin than Zelenskyy.
Carlson’s allies also exhibit an aversion to Israel that seems tied to its identity and uncanny “influence” rather than a principled opposition to its misbehavior. Owens subscribes to a whole host of antisemitic conspiracy theories about Israel. More subtly, in Kent’s resignation letter from the Trump administration, he framed the president as innocent in his decision to launch the Iran war, and argued that Israeli leaders “deceived” him into joining it. (Inexplicably, Kent also blamed Israelis for the Iraq War, contra the historical record.)
It is true that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lobbied Trump aggressively to join the war. But the idea that Trump and his entire inner circle were duped, or that he could have been strong-armed while presiding over the most powerful country in the world, is nonsense. The U.S. and Iran have been adversaries for decades, and the U.S. launched a war alongside Israel because it perceived shared interests in hobbling Iran, as well as providing a close ally with uncontested regional hegemony in an area vital to U.S. energy interests.
There also are many other factors explaining why Trump was convinced that dominating Iran would be easier than it has been, including his own anti-intellectualism, the surprising smoothness of his Venezuela intervention and his many yes-men advisers. Kent’s cartoonish theory of the cause of the war only makes sense if one subscribes to the harmful worldview of Israelis as all-powerful puppeteers. And the entire anti-Israel right’s fixation on the country as an engine of U.S. imperialism allows it to preserve the myth of America as wholesome when it isn’t “manipulated”or made a “slave” by subversive outsiders.
The real rationales for right-wing anti-Israel positioning have nothing to do with Palestinian dignity or opposition to Israeli apartheid, genocide and its brutal style of warfare against neighbors. Rather, to the extent that the right mentions Palestinians at all, it uses them as a prop: part of an agenda to force the U.S. to break with Israel based largely on a bigoted suspicion of Jews and isolationist inclinations to withdraw from Middle East interventionism.
So what does it mean from the perspective of left-wing politics? It means the anti-Israel right is a terrible source of media information and political education, because of its noxious ideologies. It also means it’s a bad idea to invite champions of the anti-Israel right to intellectual and political organizing conferences on the left as featured speakers or as friends of the cause. That would mean importing and normalizing antisemitism — and virtually every other kind of bigotry that prevails on the American right — into spaces that are meant to counter bigotry and uphold universal human rights as core principles. The left’s opposition to domination is irreconcilable with the right-wing nationalist ambition to unleash domination within America for “heritage Americans.”
But there are a couple of opportunities here for the left. One is through an emerging opportunity to persuade and recruit people from the right to the left at the grassroots. This can be done by leveraging disenchantment with Trump’s policies on Israel and Iran, and by persuading ordinary, disillusioned right-wingers to rethink their worldview. As polarized as the country is, a nontrivial share of the public floats to different parts of the political spectrum based less on ideology than on broad sentiments about status quo policies and institutions. They can be persuaded to think differently. Consider, for example, the roughly 12% of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ presidential primary voters who cast their general election ballot for Trump in 2016likely based on the notion that any vote against the political-economic establishment and forever wars was worth considering.
Pro-Palestinian organizations and the left more broadly have an opportunity to change the mind of people from the right who are sick of war and instinctively repelled by the carnage in Gaza and who feel betrayed by Trump. This would entail making clear and unapologetically antiracist arguments to persuadables that no group of people — Palestinians, Jews, immigrants, Black people, women, trans people or any other marginalized group — is “the problem.” The real problems are the political and economic systems and ideologies that uphold exploitation and perpetual warfare while scapegoating out-groups.
A charismatic Democratic presidential candidate who is fiercely opposed to the belligerent logic of imperialism has a lane here. Arguing that putting an end to American meddling in other countries’ business and to backing Israeli carnage in the Middle East could plausibly siphon off soft Trump voters who are sick of the wasteful and gruesome business of empire maintenance.
If the anti-Israel right eventually evolves into a significant subset of the GOP in Congress, Democratic lawmakers looking to cut off aid to Israel will have an opportunity to collaborate with those members to bind the president’s hands. (Greene tried to work with a handful of progressive Democrats to oppose Israeli military funding last year.) This kind of cross-ideological strategic partnership is how lawmakers get things done all the time, and a focus on a concrete policy position — no more aid to Israel — wouldn’t require the left to compromise its values. It may be the only way for progressive Democrats to wor k around pro-Israel holdouts in their own party establishment.
The question of how to work with people across different political camps is never a simple one. But here’s something that is straightforward: You don’t have to hand it to Carlson, nor do you have to not hand it to Carlson. You should ignore him and get on with with the real work of liberation and opposing empire.
Zeeshan Aleem is a writer and editor for MS NOW. He primarily writes about politics and foreign policy.
The Dictatorship
Trump hails US exceptionalism before veering into darkly political speech to usher in America 250
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump ushered in the 250th anniversary of American independence on Friday with soaring rhetoric about American exceptionalism before veering into a darkly political speech with warnings about a sinister threat of communism that evoked one of the country’s ugliest chapters.
“Communism is a mortal threat to American liberty,” he said from Mount Rushmore. “It is the greatest threat to our country, including World War I, World War II, Pearl Harbor or even 9/11.”
While the language was similar to several other speeches Trump has given in recent days, it was notable for being delivered in a national park that commemorates some of America’s most prominent presidents. And it swerved from the typically apolitical, unifying speeches past presidents like Gerald Ford or Ronald Reagan have delivered during earlier high-profile Independence Day celebrations.
Indeed, Trump’s language evoked the Red Scare of the 1950s, when alleged communists were persecuted and blacklisted from jobs across America, from Washington to Hollywood.
In New York City, Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist, delivered his own address that cast America as a nation of contradictions “working each day towards the perfection in which it was conceived.”
The president’s speech capped an Independence Day eve that was otherwise most notable for a brutal heat wave the gripped much of the eastern portion of the country. Officials have warned those celebrating the holiday to stay hydrated and take air-conditioned breaks as needed.
Philadelphia canceled its Salute to Independence parade Friday. The Great American State Fair in Washington shut down in the early afternoon before reopening at 5 p.m. The Capitol Fourth concert, a mainstay of the holiday in Washington, opened its gates a little later than normal but ultimately moved forward with appearances from Patti LaBelle, Trace Adkins, members of the Artemis II space mission and fireworks over George Washington’s Mount Vernon. An Independence Day parade scheduled for Saturday in Washington was canceled.
Looking for a place to cool off
By early afternoon Friday in Washington, hundreds of people were roaming the grounds of the National Mall, home to The Great American State Fair. They snapped photos of the flyovers and tried to cool off inside tents that offered $9 lemonades and $23 turkey legs. Many were dressed in patriotic colors, their faces glistening with sweat.
New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani delivers a speech to mark the 250th anniversary of the United States at City Hall on Friday, July 3, 2026 in New York. (Anna Connors/The New York Times via AP, Pool)
New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani delivers a speech to mark the 250th anniversary of the United States at City Hall on Friday, July 3, 2026 in New York. (Anna Connors/The New York Times via AP, Pool)
Glenn Brooks, who was pardoned by Trump for his participation in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, said he was “thankful to be participating in this grand event.”
The activity culminates in the main event Saturday, when fireworks will erupt in communities across the U.S., along with backyard cookouts and block parties. Trump will deliver another speech at the National Mall in Washington before what is being billed as a historically massive fireworks show.
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As the rest of the country struggled under stifling heat, the Pacific Northwest enjoyed temperatures in the 60s with even a few light showers.
World Cup soccer fans in Seattle were staying cool Friday as they got psyched up for Monday’s big game between the U.S. and Belgium. In the nearby suburb of Issaquah, Megan Kurowski, 31, brought her two dogs to the dog park so they could get some exercise before she went to work.
Kurowski said she was feeling positive about America’s 250th anniversary and was planning a possible paddleboard to watch the fireworks.
“Everyone’s just, from what it seems, been pretty excited about celebrating 250 years,” she said.
The holiday is unfolding at a unique time in the U.S. The anniversary has served as an opportunity for the country to reflect on its history while also reminding it of the political polarization of the moment.
Visitors walk up the front steps of the Jefferson Memorial while carrying a sun umbrella during an extreme heat advisory, Thursday, July 2, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Nathan Howard)
Visitors walk up the front steps of the Jefferson Memorial while carrying a sun umbrella during an extreme heat advisory, Thursday, July 2, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Nathan Howard)
On a holiday of unity, there is an undercurrent of division
In New York, Mamdani, a Democrat, did not mention Trump by name, but parts of his speech appeared aimed at the president’s divisive rhetoric.
“For generation after generation, we have been told that when the world has sent its people to our shores, it has not sent its best,” Mamdani said in an apparent reference to a common criticism from Trump. “Those ideals upon which our nation was built — they are strong enough to endure any authoritarian regime, but only if we reach for them.”
Freedom 250, an organization aligned with the White House, has come to rival America250, a bipartisan group founded by Congress a decade ago. Freedom 250 has organized much of the activity in Washington, including the Great American State Fair. America250 is behind the ball drops unfolding in many cities, including New York, and will host a concert in Los Angeles on Saturday.
About 4 in 10 U.S. adults feel “proud” about the country’s 250th anniversary, according to an April survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Roughly 3 in 10 said “excited” describes their emotions.
Runners wearing Independence Day-themed items jog at dawn past an overlook in Arlington, Va., as Washington prepares for sweltering temperatures, Friday, July 3, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Runners wearing Independence Day-themed items jog at dawn past an overlook in Arlington, Va., as Washington prepares for sweltering temperatures, Friday, July 3, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Ahead of the holiday, auto technician Joe Fuqua-Bejarano in Topeka, Kansas, sized up “what makes us awesome” as a people. It is clearly not the politics, in his view, but rather resilience.
“We’ve just all got to find unity somewhere, whether that’s in laughter or perseverance, and keep everybody cool,” he said from the fireworks stand where he is doing a booming business as a side hustle.
Christina Zhou, a 25-year-old research assistant from Cambridge, Massachusetts, said she would aim to “think about just things that are happening locally.”
“It feels a little bit more like within our own personal control,” she said.
Jerry Chin of Newcastle, Washington, said he wasn’t aware that the U.S. was celebrating its 250th anniversary and planned to stay low-key around the holiday. He and his wife generally skip the fireworks and instead stay home with their fearful dogs to keep them calm.
“America’s a great place, but there are some concerns,” he said. Chin, 55, and his wife worry about healthcare and issues around staying healthy, but they also stress about politics.
“We’re Democrats, so kind of given up hope,” he said. “Just feel that it is the way it is. I don’t know if there could be change.”
At the National Archives in Washington, visitors made their way through the Rotunda to look at the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights — and to escape the heat out side.
Michael Dresdner, 60, traveled from West Orange, New Jersey, with his wife, Cindi, 57, and about two dozen other people to be part of the America 250 celebrations. He said their group of travelers included people on both sides of the political aisle — and that is what gave him hope for the future of American democracy.
“We are all here, and we all love America,” he said.
___
Peoples reported from New York. Associated Press writers Martha Bellisle in Seattle, Anthony Izaguirre in New York, John Hanna in Topeka, Kan., Michael Casey in Cambridge, Mass., and Calvin Woodward, Didi Tang, Gary Fields and Nathan Ellgren in Washington contributed to this report.
The Dictatorship
The most confusing thing about Taylor Swift’s Madison Square Garden wedding spectacle
After months of media speculation, buzz about the guest list and the closure of numerous Manhattan streets on a sweltering holiday weekend, Taylor Alison Swift married Travis Michael Kelce Friday night at Madison Square Garden. While some thought the rumors involving MSG had to be an elaborate ruse, the ultra-famous pop star and the Super Bowl-winning NFL player actually tied the knot at one of the world’s most famous arenas in one of the world’s most famous cities, with NDAs and tents ensuring that the only images the rest of us see from these nuptials are the ones Swift (and, presumably, her husband) approves.
Some concrete information emerged shortly after the ceremony, courtesy of Swift’s longtime publicist. The bride and groom wore Christian Diordesigned by Jonathan Anderson, a statement confirmed. Swift’s brother, Austin, served as the bride’s “man of honor,” and Jason Kelce, the groom’s brother and podcast co-host, was his best man; and the ceremony was officiated by Adam Sandler. Because the wedding singer absolutely should anoint the marriage of the most famous pop singer in the world.
If there is one thing that people have more opinions about than Taylor Swift, it’s other people’s weddings.
As has been the case amid all the media hype preceding this event, every new detail continues to give the public yet another opportunity to deliver their verdict on Taylor Swift, Public Figure. Because if there is one thing that people have more opinions about than Taylor Swift, it’s other people’s weddings. Pretty much every wedding in human history has been deemed wanting by judgmental aunties or guests who found the bride’s dress too revealing or the first dance tacky because it was to Montell Jordan’s “This is How We Do It.” Combine Taylor Swift, a wedding and the internet, and you’ve got a recipe for basically everyone, everywhere, to have opinions about what was right or wrong, even if most people are disinclined to publicly criticize Swift for fear they will be attacked by an angry mob of Swifties.
So let’s start with MSG. It was an unconventional choice for a wedding — partly because most people could not afford to rent out a venue that seats around 20,000, but also because the ideal Swift wedding venue seemingly would be a magical gazebo illuminated by fireflies and populated by thousands of whimsical fairies dressed in cardigan sweaters. Yet MSG is also the rare venue that’s very secure, one that allows celebrities to get in and out largely undetected and whose structure could protect Swift and Kelce from paparazzi helicopters or drones. Vulture recently argued this was basically the only option for a celebrity of Swift’s caliber, who has hundreds of famous friends and wants to get married with whatever modicum of privacy she can manage.
“I’d wager that there are two events sitting back of mind as the couple plans the wedding: the thwarted terrorist plot on the European leg of the Eras Tour and the mess of crowds at Jack Antonoff’s wedding in 2023,” wrote Fran Hoepffner, referring to the pandemonium that ensued when Swift, a guest at Antonoff’s marriage to Margaret Qualley, was spotted at the rehearsal dinner. Hoepffner argued that safety had to be the No. 1 priority and that Madison Square Garden is the closest thing that exists to a Wedding Fort Knox. That is a fair point.
And yet I can’t shake the feeling that Swift and Kelce must have had other options, one of which would have been to plan a small wedding and reception in a private location that didn’t involve getting permits to shut down some of Manhattan’s busiest streets. An extremely successful and famous pop star who has a thing for numerology and a deep commitment to managing her image did exactly that in 2008. You may have heard of her. Her name is Beyoncé.
An extremely successful and famous pop star who has a thing for numerology and a deep commitment to managing her image had a private wedding in 2008. You may have heard of her. Her name is Beyoncé.
She and Jay-Z tied the knot on April 4, 2008a date they reportedly chose because of the significance of the number four (her birthday is Sept. 4; his is Dec. 4.). They invited just 40 guests and held the ceremony in Jay-Z’s Manhattan penthouse apartment. They didn’t release any video footage from the event until six years later, when they included snippets in their “On the Run” tour.
Admittedly, 2026 is a vastly different world than 2008. Then, social media was still in its relative infancy; Twitter had been born only two years earlier. While fans certainly had parasocial relationships with Beyoncé back then, the intensity of fandoms, especially Swift’s, has grown significantly. People not only want to see what Taylor Swift’s wedding looks like, they feel entitled to that imagery, in part because the Instagram industrial complex regularly serves such intimate, exhaustive accounts of wedding days, both celebrity and not. The hunger for any glimpse of this affair invited not just the mainstream and pop culture media to pay attention but also every influencer or amateur celebrity tracker with a cellphone.
Still, other modern celebrities have figured out how to navigate this admittedly absurd landscape. Tom Holland and Zendaya, arguably Hollywood’s biggest power couple at the moment, got married without any fanfare at all. They didn’t officially confirm they had a wedding until Holland acknowledged it in a recent Esquire interview. We still don’t know exactly when it happened or where. And we’ve seen no photos other than fake AI ones, which obviously don’t count. They kept everything locked down tight.
Earlier this year, Swift’s ex Harry Styles, also a globally famous pop star, proposed to actress Zoe Kravitz. Or so Page Six reportedbased on information from an unnamed source. Given that Kravitz has been spotted with a prominent ring on that finger, it seems likely they are engaged. But neither Styles nor Kravitz, the latter of whom attended the Swift/Kelce wedding, has spoken publicly about it. They also did not post photos on Instagram documenting the moment, a la Swift’s announcement that “your English teacher and your gym teacher are getting married.”
Swift’s success is at the root of her wedding conundrum: Her incredibly personal, confessional songwriting cultivated a fanbase deeply invested in her love life. Getting married without making her happy moment accessible could be viewed by some of her most devout followers as a betrayal. Hence, the Instagram post. But the most powerful thing Swift could have done for the wedding day itself was to draw a hard boundary.
Given this couple’s money and access, this wedding basically had no limits. But ultimately, the question is whether you want your wedding to be an object of public speculation or whether you want a truly private affair. Those options also represent the split between the two primary perceptions of Taylor Swift: She’s either an attention-seeking try-hard or the kind, modest, girl next door. Swift’s apparent preference for the latter view could be one reason why news leaked ahead of wedding-palooza that she and Kelce had donated $26 million to handpicked charitiesincluding several food banks, educational nonprofits and the ASPCA. Those who see Swift as more of a striver may view that incredibly generous gesture as a calculated effort to preempt inevitable criticism about the tone-deafness of having an enormously extravagant wedding on a Fourth of July weekend when many Americans are struggling.
The most powerful thing Swift could have done for the wedding day itself was to draw a hard boundary.
Like most people, Taylor Swift is more complicated than a simple binary. She may be humble and nice. But she also is often a little extra, as we see every time she dances so hard in the audience at practically every awards show. Swift doesn’t ask cameras to focus on her and pull attention from whatever is happening onstage. But she also has to know that is what always happens.
This many years into her extraordinary career, the pop megastar is still figuring out how to navigate her unique reality, and we are all watching. With the knot tied, it’s possible that interest in this couple could calm down. But it’s more likely that the countdowns to a pregnancy announcement have started, because that’s what happens when blurred personal and professional boundaries are a cornerstone of your brand. You feel obligated to share some semi-genuine version of your life for public consumption, as long as the public remains hungry for it.
Jen Chaney is a freelance TV and film critic whose work has been published in The New York Times, TV Guide and other outlets.
ByChristian Schneider
This piece is part of“America in the balance: the fight for our history and future,”a special series from MS NOW that explores where we are as a nation as we commemorate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
The one thing at which the government truly excels is convincing the public of its own importance. It builds monuments to former presidents. It slaps the name of government officials on buildings across America, adds photos of current presidents to passports and names legislation after members of Congress.
In fact, the U.S. mint rarely adorns any currency with a portrait of an American who didn’t serve in some governmental or military capacity (congratulations to Samuel Morse and Chief Running Antelope for being among the brief exceptions). Not artists. Not scientists who cured diseases or built industries. Politicians. We’ve decided that the highest honor a nation can bestow on its currency is the face of someone who spent his career extracting money from people and deciding how to spend it.
The things we actually do together — the real American accomplishments — happen in the spaces that the spindly finger of the government hasn’t yet colonized.
Progressives like to use a quote commonly attributed to the recently departed Rep. Barney FrankD-Mass.: “Government is simply the name we give to the things we choose to do together.”
But as America celebrates its 250th birthday, it is important to recognize that our nation’s greatness isn’t the result of legislative or executive action. “Government” is actually the things government does for itself, largely in service of its own perpetuation. The things we actually do together — the real American accomplishments — happen in the spaces that the spindly finger of the government hasn’t yet colonized.
The innovations that changed how humans live didn’t emerge from some bureaucratic process overseen by officials who needed another bullet point for a campaign fundraising letter. They came from garages, workshops and basements where people decided to build something without asking permission first. They came from restaurants, factories, laboratories and living rooms where Americans solved problems because they knew if they filled a need, they could make a good living for themselves, their families and their employees’ families.
American greatness evolved not because a narcissistic president jacked up tariffsbut because millions of Americans privately make billions of mutually beneficial economic decisions every day. Businesses incentivized by the prospect of making a buck created products that made everyone’s lives easier and revolutionized the world. There’s a reason Henry Ford, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates are all Americans. Amazon.com wasn’t cooked up in a government lab — it was created by a nerd who thought he could sell books on the internet, and it now sells $715 billion worth of products per year.
We created a system in which a person with nothing can build something, and that something might change the world.
Of course, America is currently saddled with the stench of its current presidency and an obedient Congress unwilling to stop his rampant corruption. For many, the country’s 250th anniversary isn’t anything to celebrate; it is instead a reminder of how far we have fallen from our national dignity and sense of decorum. (Ironically, many of the people looking to “Make America Great Again” are willing to put up with levels of coarseness, incompetence and corruption that would have gotten a president thrown out of office during the times the Red Hat Army yearns to return to.)
But America was recently handed a vivid example of how our contemptible government shouldn’t shade who we really are. Foreigners visiting for the FIFA World Cup were struck by polite Americans willing to help them and by businesses competing to serve them well. They marveled at American abundance, from giant department stores to free soda refills to ranch dressing. Like modern-day Alexis de Tocqueville, they beamed about American culture, hospitality and our bottomless well of optimism.
So while the current administration has made us a laughingstock to much of the world, the people who come here to see the real America are astonished at our quality of life. In Oscar Wilde’s “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” Mr. Erskine claims America had never been properly “discovered,” only that it had merely been “detected.” Steeped in bad headlines from abroad, our foreign visitors had detected America; they just hadn’t yet discovered it. And when they got to see it for themselves, they found that we are bigger than our government, we just talk about ourselves with much more humility.
Americans are exceptional because American individuals are exceptional. We’ve built a culture that rewards competence and ambition. We value people who solve problems without asking permission first. We created a system in which a person with nothing can build something, and that something might change the world.
That’s the America worth celebrating on its 250th birthday. Not the one that exists in the White House. Not the one where bureaucrats congratulate themselves on stifling a new building project. Not the one represented by reflecting pools or a White House ballroom. But the one that exists in the spaces between government, where Americans are still Americans: ambitious, generous, restless and capable of genuinely extraordinary things.
Naturally, Thomas Jefferson had the right priorities. Nowhere on his tombstone does it mention his time as president, vice president or secretary of state. Instead, it memorializes his founding of the University of Virginia and his authorship of both the Declaration of Independence and Virginia’s statute on religious freedom.
Or consider the tranquility represented by the September 19, 1787edition of the Pennsylvania Gazette, which announced on page one that there was a $100 reward for a stolen silver watch, a cloak and other items. The paper also noted that a small red cow wandered onto the land of John Hannis, with a plea for the owner to come retrieve it.
Buried on page two that day? A news item announcing the passage of the U.S. Constitution.
Christian Schneider
Christian Schneider writes the Anti-Knowledge newsletter. He is a co-host of the podcast “Wasn’t That Special: 50 Years of SNL.”
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