‘Awesome.’ ‘Sad.’ ‘Let’s keep democracy going.’ Americans weigh in on state of a 250-year-old nation

Politics

GUARDIAN MEDIA NEWSROOMJournalist at Guardian

July 2, 2026

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‘Awesome.’ ‘Sad.’ ‘Let’s keep democracy going.’ Americans weigh in on state of a 250-year-old nation

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Across the United States, many Americans are celebrating their country’s 250th birthday by closing their ears to all the partisan shouting. All the fingernails-on-chalkboard screeching out of Washington. All the clamour of social media agitprop.

Instead, in varied ways, they are tuning into their own personal concepts of America the Beautiful.

In Associated Press interviews with citizens in the days before the Fourth, auto technician Joe Fuqua-Bejarano, in Topeka, Kansas, sized up “what makes us awesome” as a people. It’s clearly not the politics, in his view, but rather resilience.

Politics