All The World’s a Cage
Maybe it makes sense that the signature event of the country’s 250th birthday will be a UFC fight. What could better define today’s United States than enraged, veiny-necked, mouth-breathing fellow Americans beating the hell out of each other in a cage of our own making? The only way a cage fight on the White House lawn could better represent our American moment is if the outcome is denied by our president who calls the match rigged and argues that the combatant we all saw lose with our own eyes actually won, leaving us more angry, more divided, and sure of only one thing: We want to get back in the cage and get back to beating the hell out of each other. Aside from that, we don’t agree on much, not even the shared history that we are meant to celebrate. We’ve lost the plot. And we’ve stopped trying to find it. Yoni Applebaum in The Atlantic (Gift Article): “Unable to agree on how to interpret the American story, the country’s schools, universities, and political institutions have stopped trying to tell it at all.” How America Gave Up on Its Own History. “In recent decades, the traditional American story has come under sustained attack from both flanks. On the left, scholars and activists suspicious of nationalism have pushed to redefine the United States as a country exceptional mostly for its flaws and crimes. On the right, politicians and commentators hostile to diversity have sought to gloss over those sins and, more recently, lay claim to the nation on behalf of “heritage Americans.” Unable to agree on how to tell our story, we have swiftly abandoned efforts to tell it at all. The hours devoted to social studies in schools are shrinking, and survey courses in American history are vanishing from college campuses.” (Oh well, they say 250 is an awkward age.)
+ AP: Fewer Americans say democracy is central to country’s identity. Only about half of Americans under 30 see democracy as a key element of the U.S.’s identity.
+ Democracy may no longer be core to our identity, but at least irony still is. Truck carrying fireworks catches fire and explodes in Tennessee.
