By Enyichukwu Enemanna
The United States of America on Saturday turned 250, a landmark birthday that coincides with a time of deep national division and administration determined to seize the festive centre stage.
Late Friday, President Donald Trump had visited the Mount Rushmore National Monument for an address under 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.”
Directing his speech at what he called domestic “radicals and extremists,” he stressed 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.
Trump said there has been an attempt to “beat the American spirit out of us, alienate us from our history” in recent years.
The independence anniversary comes in the middle of a brutal heatwave that has placed about 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.
Trump’s speech fell short of the violent anti-immigrant rhetoric he has wielded on his public addresses. His underlying message was however 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 in the American history.
Trump’s supporters have even introduced legislation to have his likeness chiseled 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 percent of Americans thought the US was not living up to the ideals stated in the Declaration of Independence. Opinion on this was largely divided, with most Republicans thinking it did, and most Democrats thinking it didn’t.
