We Are Throwing A Party For A Country We No Longer Trust
The sparklers have been bought for the kids. The grill is getting prepped. The National Mall is staged for fireworks, the 250th birthday party is booked, and somewhere some guy is already hawking foam hats shaped like the Statue of Liberty. So here is an awkward question to be asking at this year’s annual celebration of independence: do we still believe in the thing we are about to celebrate?
A new survey from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research suggests a lot of us are not sure. Only about a quarter of us say the country stands above all others in the world, according to the AP-NORC poll, while 44% call it one of the greatest among many. Roughly 3 in 10 now say there are better countries out there, up from 19% in an AP-NORC poll back in 2016.
That is the patriotism question. The democracy question is louder. About two thirds of adults say a democratically elected government is highly important to the nation’s identity, according to AP-NORC, down from 80% in 2021. Read that again. In four years, the share of us who think being a democracy is central to being America dropped about 14 points.
The slide is steepest among the people who will inherit the place. Only about half of adults under 30 see democracy as a key part of American identity, per the poll, compared with 81% of those 60 and older. Younger Americans are also the most likely to say other countries are simply doing it better.
It would be easy to call this cynicism and move on. It is more honest to call it disappointment. The same survey found that 51% of us say the American Dream once held true but does not anymore, according to AP-NORC. Only 22% of adults under 30 say it still holds, compared with 46% of those 60 and older. A generation watched their parents buy houses on starter salaries and now rents a room to make the math work. That is not a mood. That is a balance sheet.
Notice what is not happening here. People are not saying democracy failed. They are saying the people running it stopped honoring the deal. A 24-year-old in Alabama told AP that the framers built guardrails to stop any one faction from grabbing too much power, then added that they probably never imagined how fast those guardrails crumble once the people inside the system quit enforcing them. That is not venting. That is a fairly precise description of how republics come apart.
The split underneath all of this is partisan and it is sharp. About half of Republicans say the country stands above all others, according to AP-NORC, compared with 7% of Democrats. Most Republicans say the American Dream still works. Most Democrats and independents say it does not. We are not just arguing about who should govern. We are arguing about what country we are even living in.
And some of us are doing that math with paperwork in our pockets. A 70-year-old in San Antonio told AP that neighbors have started carrying proof of immigration status in case they get stopped, and that even citizens are being questioned now. It is hard to wave a flag while bracing to prove you belong under it.
Here is the part a poll cannot measure. Belief in democracy is not weather. It does not just happen to us. It holds when people show up, vote in the races nobody covers, call the offices, and refuse to treat the guardrails as optional.
So before the fireworks, two questions worth sitting with: what are we actually celebrating, and what are we willing to do to keep it worth celebrating? Go beyond the headlines…
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