‘Awesome.’ ‘Sad.’ ‘Let’s keep democracy going.’ Americans weigh in on state of a 250-year-old nation

Across the Unit­ed States, many Amer­i­cans are cel­e­brat­ing their coun­try’s 250th birth­day by clos­ing their ears to all the par­ti­san shout­ing. All the fin­ger­nails-on-chalk­board screech­ing out of Wash­ing­ton. All the clam­our of so­cial me­dia ag­it­prop.

In­stead, in var­ied ways, they are tun­ing in­to their own per­son­al con­cepts of Amer­i­ca the Beau­ti­ful.

In As­so­ci­at­ed Press in­ter­views with cit­i­zens in the days be­fore the Fourth, au­to tech­ni­cian Joe Fuqua-Be­jara­no, in Tope­ka, Kansas, sized up “what makes us awe­some” as a peo­ple. It’s 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’s do­ing a boom­ing busi­ness as a side hus­tle.

The world’s long-run­ning im­age of Amer­i­cans as a brash and con­fi­dent (if not boast­ful and jin­go­is­tic) lot did not square eas­i­ly with the tem­pered en­thu­si­asms and trep­i­da­tions ex­pressed by many of the peo­ple AP in­ter­viewed.

“There are lots of points of con­tention go­ing around,” not­ed one of them, Christi­na Zhou, a 25-year-old re­search as­sis­tant from Cam­bridge, Mass­a­chu­setts. Yet “there are still a lot of beau­ti­ful things that are hap­pen­ing.”

“What I’m try­ing to do is think about just things that are hap­pen­ing lo­cal­ly,” she added. “It feels a lit­tle bit more like with­in our own per­son­al con­trol.”

‘We’re just hap­py Amer­i­cans’

In Mont Ver­non, New Hamp­shire, farmer Mindy Dean, 50, and her fam­i­ly will be milk­ing their goats Sat­ur­day and maybe tak­ing in some lo­cal fire­works. Or maybe not. The 250th hoopla has been most­ly lost on her. “We’re just hap­py Amer­i­cans,” she said. “We kin­da do our own thing and just en­joy our free­dom as Amer­i­cans.”

In con­trast, the goat-free Neil Casey, an 81-year-old re­tiree from Nashua, New Hamp­shire, and his friend Mau­reen Re­gan, who lives in Cam­bridge, are free-range cel­e­brants. They’re roam­ing Boston’s his­tor­i­cal sites, like Paul Re­vere’s house, and as many of the city’s Fourth events as they can man­age. They, too, are plug­ging their ears to dis­cord.

“I’m very much aware of our coun­try and what we’ve been through, you know, so I’m just try­ing to im­merse my­self in the at­mos­phere of the 250th,” Casey said. Re­gan took heart in all the soc­cer fans who poured in­to the coun­try for the World Cup and praised what they ex­pe­ri­enced.

“They love every­thing we have,” she said,” and I want peo­ple to not for­get that and re­mem­ber how lucky we are.” Her ad­vice to com­pa­tri­ots: “Just en­joy the mo­ment. En­joy that we’ve been here for 250 years.”

Still, for some, it is near­ly im­pos­si­ble to sep­a­rate hol­i­day pa­tri­o­tism from steps by Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump to bend the cel­e­bra­tions to­ward him­self, as with the Fourth of Ju­ly fes­tiv­i­ties on the Na­tion­al Mall that he said will cul­mi­nate in a Trump ral­ly Sat­ur­day.

When pa­tri­o­tism feels ‘Re­pub­li­can’

“When you’re cel­e­brat­ing the Fourth of Ju­ly right now, it feels like that’s like a Re­pub­li­can thing to do,” said Made­line Capodilupo, 26, a spe­cial-ed­u­ca­tion teacher who lives in Boston. She’ll spend the week­end with her fi­ancé’s fam­i­ly at their Maine beach house.

“It’s just hard to cel­e­brate some­thing when it doesn’t feel like we should be cel­e­brat­ing any­thing,” she said.

What cel­e­brants are cel­e­brat­ing, ex­act­ly, is di­verse and per­son­al.

Ronald Hall spent 18 months in the Air Force to­ward the end of the Viet­nam War. His wife, Karen, served two years in the Army and took part in Op­er­a­tion Desert Storm dur­ing the first Gulf War. While they shopped for veg­eta­bles at De­troit’s East­ern Mar­ket this week, Ronald said he’s spent a life­time cel­e­brat­ing Amer­i­can ideals, which might be dis­tinct from re­al­i­ty.

As a Black man, he said, Amer­i­ca’s promise of free­dom and equal­i­ty was at the core. “I grew up re­mem­ber­ing the promise,” he said. “That’s what we cel­e­brat­ed: the promise, not the coun­try.”

Old war­riors find their faith test­ed

Vet­er­ans are al­ways front and cen­tre in Amer­i­ca’s big oc­ca­sions and the 250th is no dif­fer­ent. At the New Hamp­shire Vet­er­ans Home in Tilton, res­i­dents are look­ing for­ward to a com­mu­ni­ty cel­e­bra­tion in the com­ing days that will fea­ture a Na­tion­al Guard Black Hawk he­li­copter, a World War II am­bu­lance, food trucks, mu­sic and even Un­cle Sam on stilts.

The old war­riors are keep­ing the faith. But that faith is be­ing test­ed.

“I be­lieve this coun­try is the great­est that ever ex­ist­ed,” said Leo LeClerc, 83, an Air Force vet­er­an who served in Viet­nam. “Our democ­ra­cy is strong and it will con­tin­ue to be strong as long as peo­ple par­tic­i­pate in it.”

“But,” he said, “I don’t like what’s go­ing on in this coun­try” and “I don’t feel very good about the 250th.” An in­de­pen­dent who vot­ed for Trump in 2016, he now be­lieves a “cult of per­son­al­i­ty has tak­en over” around the pres­i­dent.

Tom Gau­mont, 74, an Army vet­er­an and for­mer his­to­ry teacher, re­mem­bered the 1976 bi­cen­ten­ni­al as a more hope­ful time, de­spite the af­ter­shocks of Pres­i­dent Richard Nixon’s res­ig­na­tion un­der threat of im­peach­ment.

“I’m kin­da sad at this point with what I an­tic­i­pate,” Gau­mont said. “I’ve seen and taught about how these things kind of crum­ble, so I’m con­cerned.”

“We’ve last­ed this long,” he added, “and this is a very ex­is­ten­tial time in our his­to­ry.”

Al­lan Bai­ley, 83, a Re­pub­li­can who al­so served in Viet­nam and lat­er owned a mo­tel, voiced sim­i­lar pes­simism.

“I’m wor­ried about how the coun­try is go­ing, I re­al­ly am,” he said. “I don’t know what we’re go­ing to leave our chil­dren, and that both­ers me a lot.”

A se­cu­ri­ty guard works to ‘make the USA the great­est’

In Dear­born, Michi­gan, Nabeel Mawari, 38, sound­ed a more hope­ful note. On Sat­ur­day, he’ll be work­ing his se­cu­ri­ty guard job while his wife and two young sons cel­e­brate the hol­i­day with rel­a­tives. An im­mi­grant from Yemen, now a U.S. cit­i­zen, Mawari spoke from his back­yard about life in the Unit­ed States.

“My life is here,” Mawari said. “We try to make the U.S.A. the great­est. That’s why I’m here. I love this coun­try. The Fourth of Ju­ly, it is very im­por­tant.”

Then there’s the man who, for per­haps very un­der­stand­able rea­sons, want­ed to stay far away from the po­lit­i­cal fray.

Gary Mac­Grath, 77, has been a car­i­ca­tur­ist at a sub­ur­ban Philadel­phia fair for 14 years. This year, Mc­Grath’s booth was sand­wiched right be­tween the lo­cal De­mo­c­ra­t­ic and Re­pub­li­can Par­ty clubs. Talk about a rock and a hard place. He said he learned as a bar­tender ear­li­er in life to “nev­er talk about re­li­gion or pol­i­tics” and was heed­ing that les­son now.

But he did per­mit him­self this: “It’s 250 years,” he said. “Let’s keep democ­ra­cy go­ing.” —WASH­ING­TON (AP)

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Sto­ry by CALVIN WOOD­WARD and HOL­LY RAMER | As­so­ci­at­ed Press

Hol­ly Ramer re­port­ed from Bed­ford and Tilton, N.H. As­so­ci­at­ed Press writ­ers John Han­na in Tope­ka, Kan., Mike Catal­i­ni in Southamp­ton, Pa., Michael Casey in Cam­bridge, Mass., and Corey Williams in De­troit con­tributed to this re­port.