America's 250th anniversary finds a fragmented national story

Competing visions of history shape the semiquincentennial

The AP analysis, written by journalist Ted Anthony and published July 6, examines how the United States — a nation it describes as founded on storytelling rather than “hundreds of years of common culture” — is experiencing a fragmentation of its shared narratives on the 250th anniversary of independence.

“From the beginning, many decades before it became the United States, American society was founded not on hundreds of years of common culture but on something less tangible: a series of stories that it told itself over and over — full of truth, tall tales and outright lies — until it willed itself into existence,” Anthony writes.

The piece identifies the current moment as one of intense contest over who controls the national story, noting that “from schools to political arenas, from news to entertainment to history books, the battle rages.”

Richard Slotkin, a frontier historian, told the AP that the country’s invented nature makes the maintenance of shared narrative essential. “There’s nothing organic about the United States. It’s an invented country,” Slotkin said. “And if we stop telling the American story, we’re just a bunch of folks. … You have to keep adding new chapters to the story and making the story make sense.”

The AP reports that the 250th anniversary itself became a venue for the narrative competition. America250, a bipartisan effort created by Congress to coordinate the semiquincentennial, operated alongside Freedom 250, a Trump administration-backed version that the AP says was “far more aligned with the MAGA version of American history.” Musical acts withdrew from Freedom 250 concerts, saying the events had become too political.

The article also describes President Donald Trump as “a master of brand-building narrative” who is “vigorously reframing the story America tells about itself.” The AP notes that Trump has sought to place his own image at the center of the American narrative, citing his desire to be on Mount Rushmore, his face appearing on the anniversary edition of the U.S. passport, and additions to Washington, D.C., including “the controversial redo of the reflecting pool” and a “$400 million ballroom he is adding to the White House.”

The American flag serves as a central symbol in the analysis. An AP-NORC poll conducted last month found significant divides in how Americans display the flag: Republicans and older white Americans are more likely to fly it or wear it as clothing, while Democrats and Black Americans are less so.

Ken Burns, the documentary filmmaker, told the AP: “It’s an extraordinarily potent symbol for anybody — left, right or center. It’s interesting when we have this assault on traditional democratic institutions that the people who are out in the streets protesting have sort of reclaimed — and they never should have relinquished — the American flag.”

John Baick, a historian at Western New England University, told the AP that the use of storytelling in the political arena is contributing to a fragmented national identity. “I think it’s just become a muddled mess,” Baick said. “I think it’s just going to be almost the breakdown of a national system and states will figure it out, cities will figure it out, individuals will figure it out. They’ll put out their flags, but … they’ll tell their own stories.”

The AP notes that the United States has “less than 400” years of recorded history to build upon, contrasting it with nations like China and Russia that have “millennia of tales.” The article closes by framing the American story as an ongoing project: “Where will it go next? And who will tell it most persuasively?”