#semiquincentennial — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #semiquincentennial, aggregated by home.social.
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Why is capitalism interrogated and sometimes despised by the people who come into contact with it?
Because this is America, you boot-licking moral blanks, and we express ourselves and reflect on our many different experiences freely.
Because that is our right as citizens, to resist your attempts to dictate truth and historical knowledge.
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And then this:
At the bottom there’s a QR code that encourages you to “discover more fun and quizzes at PragerU”. The code links to PragerU’s website page Capitalism 101. “Sign up to learn why capitalism is the greatest and fairest economic system ever known,” it says. “Capitalism gave us great prosperity, yet why is it so misunderstood and even demonized?”
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Back to the Guardian:
“The US is back at war. Its president has threatened to destroy an entire civilisation, posted AI images of himself as Jesus and survived his third assassination attempt, while on the domestic front federal officers have killed American citizens at point-blank range. Quite the year to be celebrating American greatness.”
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In *Erasing History: How Fascists Re-write the Past to Control the Future,* Jason Stanley observes the “mutually reinforcing” relationship between representation and practice.
How we describe and talk about the past informs how we practice politics and frame the rights of citizenship today.
These stupid A250 trucks are driving around today as SCOTUS guts the Voting Rights Act (6-3) and these two things are mirror images of each other.
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Per Guardian:
The man who launched his first bid for the presidency by descending a golden escalator, who has sloshed gold paint all over the White House, not to mention the Aurelian hue he has coloured his own skin, would like us to believe that he, and he alone, is the channel through which America’s so-called “Judeo-Christian” lineage now flows, and that he, and he alone, should be credited for all its future greatness.
#history #uspol #semiquincentennial
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/apr/29/trump-freedom-truck-museum-exhibit
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Rehashing my March #editorialcartoons from 1986, 1996, 2006, 2016, and even 2026 in today’s Graphical #History Tour:
https://bergetoons.blogspot.com/2026/03/the-winter-of-our-recycled-content.html#lgbtq #cartoons #shakespeare #budget #republicans #semiquincentennial #hillaryclinton #televangelism
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“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”*…
As the U.S. prepares to celebrate its 250th birthday, Dan Friedman and Amanda Moore unpack the ways in which in Trump administration is working to control the country’s future by bulldozing its past. They open with a recounting of the marking of the 250th birthday of the Army (and of Donald Trump’s birthday) last June: several thousand came to watch the military parade; an estimated 5 million Americans held counter-protests…
… spectators had lined up for hours to get inside the security perimeter. Uniformed troops were handing out free bottles of Phorm Energy—a beverage launched nationally the month before by Anheuser-Busch and Dana White, a vocal Trump supporter who runs the Ultimate Fighting Championship. Phorm, which bills itself as the “ultimate energy drink,” is an official sponsor of America250, a government-funded nonprofit organizing a series of celebrations for the country’s 250th birthday, culminating on July 4 this year. When asked, a soldier explained he had been ordered to hand out the samples—despite Defense Department rules that bar the military from endorsing “a particular company, product, service, or website.” The Pentagon didn’t answer questions about this apparent violation…
But the parade was simply a warm-up…
… So it goes with the Trump administration’s approach to the country’s semiquincentennial. Congress is expected to allocate some $150 million for the festivities, but that’s not enough to fulfill Trump’s vision. So corporations with links to the president or his inner circle—UFC, Palantir, Oracle, Amazon, Coinbase—have signed on as sponsors, pouring in millions of dollars alongside companies like Chrysler, Coca-Cola, and General Mills…
… America250 and the White House insist they are planning nonpartisan festivities for all Americans, rather than creating a slush fund to throw the president militarized birthday parties and advance hard-right ideology. But in reality, American history is being subordinated to Trump’s cult of personality. The president’s face is suddenly everywhere—next to George Washington on America250-themed National Parks passes; alongside Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt on giant banners hanging from federal buildings; on a $1 coin under consideration by the US Treasury.
Faced with sporadic pushback from a congressional commission overseeing America250 and from career officials at various agencies, Trump is now seeking to evade even these modest constraints. In December, he launched a new organization, Freedom 250, that could implement his most outlandish anniversary events without the inconvenience of legislative oversight or mandatory bipartisanship. For the president’s 80th birthday this year, Freedom 250 will help organize a UFC fight on the White House lawn.
The semiquincentennial is just one part of the commander in chief’s broader campaign to harness the mechanisms of the federal government to enforce his preferred version of the nation’s history and culture—a Trumpified presentation of America’s past and present. On the fifth anniversary of the January 6 insurrection, the administration even rolled out a taxpayer-funded webpage seeking to recast the day’s events as a patriotic effort to protest “the fraudulent election.” Three weeks later, Trump’s FBI seized hundreds of thousands of 2020 ballots and other election material from Georgia’s largest county. “TRUMP WON BIG,” the president declared the next morning. “Crooked Election!”
Since his inauguration last year, Trump has taken personal control of the Kennedy Center—reshaping its artistic programming, installing a MAGA-dominated board that claims to have renamed it in his honor, and then closing it for renovations. He’s railed against “OUT OF CONTROL” museums that he insists are too focused on “how bad Slavery was.” He has successfully pressured the Smithsonian Institution to review displays to ensure “unbiased content” and has extracted significant concessions over what top universities teach students. At his direction, the National Park Service has altered or removed scores of exhibits at parks and historic sites on topics including slavery, Native Americans, climate change, and even fossils. Trump acolytes are also leveraging federal dollars to stop local librarians and educators from sharing content they dislike.
Under the pretense of stamping out “woke” ideas and promoting patriotism, the White House is attempting to mandate uncritical acceptance of its own take on the American story, one that celebrates the martial feats of mostly white men and an imagined religious and ideological conformity that minimizes the fights, tribulations, and dissenters who have defined the country. It’s an effort that flies in the face of American ideals—and reality.
“In a pluralist democracy, there are invariably conflicts of values,” says Alexander Karn, a Colgate University historian who has written about the 250th anniversary. “To deny that messiness by seeking to erase the perspectives that don’t flatter a dominant group or help create a triumphal history is anti-egalitarian and, therefore, anti-democratic.”
Instead, Karn argues, “the road to a ‘more perfect Union,’ which is enshrined in the Constitution, runs through the past, and it depends on our willingness to confront our history in an honest and thoroughgoing way.”
Which is not the road we’re on…
[Friedman and Moore supply much more detail on the revisionist (in some case, “suppressionist”) efforts underway, and their relationship to the MAGA agenda. They conclude…]
…Rallies that celebrate a simplified, sanctified historical narrative have long been a favorite tool of autocrats. “Dictators brook no opposition, and this extends to the past,” says Karn, the Colgate historian. “When a dictator is intent on creating or sustaining a hierarchical social order, he will see to it that history abides.”
The military parade through Washington four days later proved to be a clumsy prelude for Trump’s very real efforts to deploy troops, along with heavily armed federal agents, on the streets of even more cities—often against the wishes of local officials. To justify sending the National Guard to Portland, the president made false claims about widespread violence, perhaps because Fox News repeatedly re-aired violent footage from 2020 as though it were part of the 2025 anti-ICE protests.
Since August, the Labor Department’s DC headquarters has displayed an America250-branded banner with a Mao-style image of Trump above the words “American Workers First.” The spectacle drew attention when National Guard members deployed by Trump were photographed beneath it—an image that captures the authoritarian ethos of his second term.
The troops, supposedly dispatched to Washington to fight crime, are now staying on in connection with the semiquincentennial. In an October court filing, the DC attorney general revealed that Guard leaders were planning for a prolonged deployment. “We know that America250 occurs this summer, and that will be a factor in determining the future of the mission,” a Guard commanding general wrote in an email included in the filing. In January, Trump officially extended the DC operation through the end of 2026, even as he bowed to court rulings blocking him from unleashing the armed forces on other parts of the country.
That Trump’s enthusiasm for the domestic use of troops is merging with America’s 250th festivities is almost too easy a metaphor. To celebrate the anniversary of a war sparked in part by the quartering of soldiers in US cities, the administration is lengthening a military occupation vehemently opposed by the local population.
A quarter-millennium later, amid “No Kings” protests and an unprecedented executive power grab, the arguments against tyranny that inspired American independence are alive and pressing. It seems worth asking whether America250 will celebrate the ideals of the country’s founders—or those of the monarch they rebelled against…
Eminently worth reading in full: “Trump’s War on History,” from @dfriedman.bsky.social and @noturtlesoup17.bsky.social in @motherjones.com.
* George Orwell, 1984
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As we face the past, we might send heliocentric birthday greetings to Galileo Galilei, the physicist, philosopher, and pioneering astronomer; he was born on this date in 1564. Galileo (whom, readers will recall, had his share of trouble with authorities displeased with his challenge to Aristotelean cosmology), died insisting “still, it [the Earth] moves.”
Draft of Galileo’s letter to Leonardo Donato, Doge of Venice, in which he first recorded the movement of the moons of Jupiter– an observation that upset the notion that all celestial bodies must revolve around the Earth. (source)
#America250 #astronomy #culture #Galileo #GalileoGalilei #heliocentricity #history #philosophy #politics #revisionism #Science #semiquincentennial #society #Trump -
Join the Floral Celebration at the 2026 Philadelphia Flower Show: A Journey Through American Gardening https://www.allforgardening.com/1604507/join-the-floral-celebration-at-the-2026-philadelphia-flower-show-a-journey-through-american-gardening/ #AmericaTravelNews #AmericanGardening #garden #gardening #pennsylvania #Philadelphia #semiquincentennial #TopDestinationsInAmerica #TourismNews #TravelEventsInAmerica
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Documents from the nation’s founding on tour for America 250
Ten documents from the nation’s founding era are leaving their home at the National Archives in D.C. and…
#NewsBeep #News #US #USA #UnitedStates #UnitedStatesOfAmerica #America #america's250 #declarationofindependence #documents #exhibit #FoundingFathers #lukelukert #nationalarchives #semiquincentennial #UnitedStatesofAmerica #UShistory
https://www.newsbeep.com/us/419778/ -
Documents from the nation’s founding on tour for America 250
Ten documents from the nation’s founding era are leaving their home at the National Archives in D.C. and…
#NewsBeep #News #US #USA #UnitedStates #UnitedStatesOfAmerica #America #america's250 #declarationofindependence #documents #exhibit #FoundingFathers #lukelukert #nationalarchives #semiquincentennial #UnitedStatesofAmerica #UShistory
https://www.newsbeep.com/us/419778/ -
Welcome to 2026. The U.S. Semiquincentennial.
Brace yourselves for ALL the MAGA fuckwittery. There’s never been a president so intent on warping the past to fit an un-democratic, illiberal worldview.
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In this week's E-Sylum, an article on the US Mint's semiquincentennial coin launch:
http://coinbooks.org/v28/esylum_v28n50.html#article23
What is a semiquincentennial? It is "a very long word for a very big anniversary — 2026 is the semiquincentennial, or 250th anniversary, of the United States.
Semiquincentennial derives from the Latin words semi, "half," quinque, "five," and centum, "one hundred." You don't need this word very often, since it's rare that a country, building, or organization marks its 250th anniversary, but when you do, it's a big deal. The British Parliament celebrated its semiquincentennial in 1957, and the Taj Mahal was built in 1648, which means its semiquincentennial happened back in 1898."
#Numismatics #Coins #CoinCollecting #UnitedStates #Semiquincentennial @numismatics
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I wonder if part of the festivities for the semiquincentennial will be a procession to the National Archives where they'll torch The Constitution? #semiquincentennial
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#Trump and #Vance, et al.: "Organizations should absolutely be able to fire employees who post things on social media that they object to! The #FirstAmendment doesn't apply!"
Trump Appointee fired from #Semiquincentennial Commission: "How dare they fire me for something I posted on social media?! It's a clear First Amendment violation!"
https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/23/politics/ari-abergel-america-250-birthday
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One if by land, two if by sea, three if by internet.
Happy semiquincentennial of Paul Revere’s ride.
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One if by land, two if by sea, three if by internet. Happy semiquincentennial of Paul Revere’s ride. #USpol #PaulRevere #semiquincentennial
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Okay, I've nothing to say about Jimmy Rane at the moment, but realizing the US has its 250th birthday coming up in 2026 just strangely upped the stakes of the #November2024 election.
Or, put another way, who would you rather see presiding at endless #semiquincentennial celebrations, #Trump or #Harris?
Frankly, I can't imagine a greater embarrassment to such an historic moment than #DonaldJTrump.
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I think maybe they're getting little bit previous. I'm really not certain they're going to make it.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Semiquincentennial
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@GovTrack
A PREVIEW OF THE 2026 "250th #Semiquincentennial #4thofjuly Celebration" if #TheOrangeMenace wins: -
@GovTrack
A PREVIEW OF THE 2026 "250th #Semiquincentennial #4thofjuly Celebration" if #TheOrangeMenace wins: -
@christineburns
REMEMBER that in 2020, T**** wanted Tanks rolling down Pennsylvania Ave for the #4thofjuly.What do you think the Official 2026 "250th #Semiquincentennial" #IndependenceDay celebration will look like? 😱
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We’re going to squeeze in the #Semiquincentennial #America250 in 2026 while 2023 has headlines like: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/18/us/politics/michigan-republicans-deperno-karamo.html