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AMERICA TURNS 250 today – a landmark birthday that coincides with a time of deep national division and a president determined to seize the festive centre stage.
The independence anniversary also comes in the middle of a brutal heatwave that has placed some 160 million Americans under major or extreme heat warnings, playing havoc with planned parades and block parties in towns and cities across much of the country.
But the searing temperatures have done little to deter President Donald Trump, who has gone to great lengths to ensure the event becomes, in large part, a celebration of himself.
On Saturday evening, Trump will hold a huge campaign-style political rally on the National Mall in the capital Washington, along with roaring military flyovers and what he has touted as the world’s biggest fireworks display.
“It’s going to be approximately 107 degrees (41C) out, and I’m going to go and I’m going to make a really long speech – just to show that I can do anything,” he earlier said.
Late Friday, the president visited the Mount Rushmore national monument for an address under the gaze of the giant granite heads of four of his legendary predecessors.
While he lauded American exceptionalism and praised the country’s past leaders, he said that the American identity was “under a renewed attack.”
Taking aim at domestic “radicals and extremists,” he charged that there was “a resurgence of the communist menace in our land.”
It is a theme that Trump has repeatedly hammered home in recent weeks, as the anti-establishment left of the Democratic Party carried a string of US primary victories.
The president has cast the rise of the left ahead of November’s midterm elections as “communists” on the rampage, posing a major “threat” to the country.
On Friday, Trump said there has been an attempt to “beat the American spirit out of us, alienate us from our history” in recent years.
While his language fell short of the more violent anti-immigrant rhetoric he has wielded in past speeches, the underlying message was clear.
“You do not have to be born here, but you do have to love what we have built,” he said.
The location of Trump’s speech was a fitting backdrop for a president who views himself as one of the greats.
Trump’s supporters have even introduced legislation to have his likeness chiselled beside those of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt.
For Americans, the 250th festivities offer a moment for reflection as well as celebration.
After two and a half centuries of triumphs and tragedies, slavery and freedom, civil war and world wars, multiple surveys indicate a nation divided about where it is and where it’s going.
A Quinnipiac University Poll showed 61% of Americans thought the US was not living up to the ideals stated in the Declaration of Independence — though even opinion on that was divided, with most Republicans thinking it did, and most Democrats thinking it didn’t.
“There’s too many people that hate on each other, steal from each other. They don’t love each other,” said Los Angeles-based artist Johnny Presley.
“I’m sick of the way this country treats people. I’m sick of the way this country treats its foreign neighbours,” he added. “I’m sick of a lot of damn things.”
For others, like American-Iranian Karisa Tavassoli, an educator in Atlanta, the basics of the American dream still ring true.
“I have safety, I have freedom of speech, I have freedom of religion, I can wear whatever I want as a woman,” she told AFP.
“There are many flaws here, but we have something very special that’s worthy of protecting,” she added.
Alonzo Coby, a member of the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes, is grateful to be able to celebrate 250 years of the United States.
“But I want people to remember that Native Americans have been here a lot longer than 250 years,” he said.
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