by Mick Rhodes | editor@claremont-courier.com

Us fogies who were around for the big bicentennial to-do of 1976 will recall a nationwide celebration disbursed over all 50 states, culminating July 4 with President Ford and his family watching a massive fireworks show from a balcony at the White House.

The big day was preceded by a two-year marketing blitz that sold us everything from patriotic toothpaste to Apollo Creed as George Washington crossing the Delaware. I was 12 at the time, but even then I understood much of it was hokey and filled with blind spots, a cheesy Bob Hope TV special veneer plastered over a country still reeling from the Vietnam War, Watergate, and a decade of political assassinations and civil uprisings.

One of the celebration’s prominent features was “The Bicentennial Wagon Train,” a horse-drawn convoy organizers likened to a traveling “patriotic ‘Godspell.’” The caravan spent a year traversing the country before converging at Valley Forge, PA on July 4, 1976. Of course, teenage me was unaware of protests at the time by indigenous peoples who, quite correctly, claimed the government-sponsored undertaking omitted little inconveniences of manifest destiny like the genocide and forced displacement of Native Americans.

But we do love a show, and by and large America bought into the big bicentennial celebrations in thousands of cities and towns, each with its own parade, fireworks show, and patriotic government proclamation. It wasn’t a complete display of unity by any stretch, but the bicentennial was perhaps the most widespread expression of affection for country we had seen to date.

What a difference 50 years can make.

On Sunday we were assaulted by the garish, “Idiocracy”-esque “UFC Freedom 250,” an 80^th birthday celebration for President Trump and a lead-up to the June 24 kickoff of the weekslong  “Freedom 250” celebrations, which will again culminate July 4 with “Salute To America 250 Celebration & Fireworks” on the National Mall.

The takeaway quote from Sunday came from a despicable, racist Ultimate Fighting Championship guy, who declared on the streaming broadcast that former First Lady Michelle Obama was a man.

If that doesn’t just personify where we’re at right now I don’t know what does.

This small, hateful, muscle-bound trash can of a human represents the apex of decades of racism and misogyny enabled and normalized by Trump. The fact that a UFC fight took place on the White House lawn was embarrassing enough, but to give that guy a microphone and a platform was the icing on the day-old Walmart sheet cake.

But wait, there’s more!

“UFC Freedom 250” was the first ever for-profit private event held on White House property. And just who enjoyed the financial windfall from the 4,500 or so in attendance, some of whom paid up to $1.5 million for tickets to the invite-only event? Let’s break it down: TKO Group Holdings owns UFC, who produced the event. Trump purchased between $15,000 and $50,000 in TKO stock on March 25. The crypto stablecoin used to pay the fighters at “UFC Freedom 250” was from USD1, of which the Trump family owns 51%. USD1 is owned by World Liberty Financial, which, in a shock to no one, is majority owned by the Trump family of grifters. Oh, one more thing: also on sale now are “UFC Freedom 250 coins,” a nice keepsake from Sunday’s grift, er, event, purportedly “designed by President Trump” and yours for just $12,000.

It should also surprise no one that Trump would scoop up millions (billions?) from “UFC Freedom 250.” After all, his personal wealth has ballooned from $2.3 billion in 2024 to $6.2 billion since taking office for a second time on January 20, 2025. And this is just his personal portfolio. His sons, daughter, and son-in-law have all made billions as well.

So, just where is the bottom for these people?

Yes, “these people.” I’m aware that’s a loaded phrase, but in this instance it’s more than warranted. “These people” — the Trump administration and its political enablers — celebrate killing, cloak their greed in “religious” iconography, lie as they breathe, and will cross any line in their quest to retain power and enrich the billionaire — now trillionaire — class. They are dismantling our fragile democracy, brazenly disregarding the authority of the courts, and have shown hateful disdain for everyone who speaks up against them, with violent, state-sponsored reprisals up to and including the murder of their fellow citizens.

So yeah, “these people” are demonstrably evil, corrupt, and they need to be called out as such at every turn, to hell with the consequences.

And they do not represent us.

Today the official White House webpage, whitehouse.gov, invites visitors to its email list with the jubilant, all-caps banner, “Welcome to the Golden Age!” I wonder to whom that “golden age” is meant to appeal? The “Golden Age” of criminalizing dissent against genocide? Of shooting protesters in the face?

“Under the President’s leadership, the Salute to America 250 Task Force (‘Task Force 250’) is executing a full year of festivities, which began on Memorial Day, 2025, and will continue through the end of 2026,” reads the descriptor at whitehouse.gov/freedom250. “Task Force 250 aims to inspire a renewed love for American history, encourage citizens to experience the beauty of our country, ignite a spirit of adventure and innovation to help our nation succeed for the next 250 years, and invite Americans to pray for our country and our people and rededicate ourselves as One Nation Under God.”

Yep, that’s our government, pulling God into the public square again. Which God, I wonder? Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva, Allah, Tetragrammaton, Yahweh, Jesus? America is made up of Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, and nearly 400 other mono- and polytheistic faith traditions (not to mention the 29% of us who are religiously unaffiliated), and one thing’s for sure: whichever God one worships, he, she, or they are definitely against rounding up brown people and throwing them into for-profit concentration camps.

The bicentennial was flawed, but still represented an effort by government to shore up a wounded country. “Freedom 250” should aim similarly and offer a gesture of healing to a bruised populace.

But Trump’s party for America’s 250^th — a predictably gaudy, self-dealing, historically whitewashed affair with him as the “headliner,” of course — is no healing gesture; it’s designed only to further divide us up among left and right and stoke the partisan tribalism that serves as cover for what has always been his real game: enriching himself, his family, and the billionaires and corporations to which he is accountable.