On 4 July 1776 the United States declared its independence from the greatest empire on earth.
For 250 years Americans have celebrated that act of rebellion. The United States likes to think of itself as the country that threw off colonial rule, rejected empire and built something entirely new.
The latest anniversary falls during the World Cup, shared between the US, Canada and Mexico. Before the World Cup started there were horror stories about fans and officials being denied visas. There were fears that ICE, Trump’s paramilitary force, would start rounding up fans.
But none of that happened. Full stadiums, happy fans, big crowds. A diverse, multicultural America hosting a diverse, multicultural group of fans cheering on their teams.
The contrast is striking, because the World Cup is not really being held in MAGA America. It is being held in another America altogether.
The America of New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Seattle, San Francisco, Boston, Atlanta and Houston. The America of global cities, immigration, universities, finance, technology, film, music and international trade.
Ten of the eleven American host cities are led by Democratic mayors. Only Dallas is not.
| US World Cup Host City | Mayor | Party |
| Atlanta | Andre Dickens | Democrat |
| Boston | Michelle Wu | Democrat |
| Dallas | Eric Johnson | Republican |
| Houston | John Whitmire | Democrat |
| Kansas City | Quinton Lucas | Democrat |
| Los Angeles | Karen Bass | Democrat |
| Miami | Eileen Higgins | Democrat |
| New York City | Zohran Mamdani | Democrat / Democratic Socialist |
| Philadelphia | Cherelle Parker | Democrat |
| San Francisco | Daniel Lurie | Democrat |
| Seattle | Katie Wilson | Democrat / Democratic Socialist |
That is why members of the Trump administration have been conspicuous by their absence. They don’t want footage of them being booed and jeered broadcast around the world.
The contrast between the success of the world cup and the humiliating turn out for Trump’s State Fair/Rally is hard to avoid:
For the last decade much of the world has come to see America through Donald Trump. ICE raids. Culture wars. Tariffs. Political rallies. Endless outrage. But millions of football supporters are discovering a different America.
I’ve travelled across the United States more times than I can remember. I’ve ridden the Acela Express from Boston to Washington and driven both eastern and western stretches of Route 66. I’ve wandered through New York, Chicago, Detroit, San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego. I’ve stood in Yosemite, crossed deserts towards Palm Springs and Joshua Tree, and spent enough time there to know that America has never been one thing.
It is a vast argument conducted across a continent.
That is why I have always been sceptical when people on the British left describe America itself as an imperial power.
America certainly projected power after the Second World War. It fought disastrous wars, overthrew governments and often confused its own interests with those of the wider world. But it also believed, however imperfectly, that it was exporting democracy.
That belief has changed. Today America increasingly exports something else. Chaos.
Partly because chaos has become a political strategy. Donald Trump did not cut through the noise. He became the noise. Flood the zone, dominate the headlines, keep opponents permanently reacting.
But chaos also serves another purpose. Chaos is profitable. When institutions are weakened, regulation becomes easier to dismantle. Public scrutiny fades. Wealth and power become easier to concentrate.
That is why I increasingly think the most revealing comparison is not with American imperialism abroad. It is with colonialism at home.
Colonial systems have usually rested on three foundations:
They extract wealth from one population for the benefit of another.
They develop an ideology that justifies that extraction.
And they create a political class whose job is to administer the system.
MAGA increasingly resembles that pattern. Not because it is conquering foreign territory, but because it increasingly treats large parts of America itself as territory to be subdued. Its political rhetoric is directed against America’s biggest cities, universities, media organisations, technology companies, cultural institutions and even parts of the federal government itself. It is not Venezuela, Canada, Greenland or Panama that MAGA want’s to take over. It is the profitable, successful parts of the US.
Places that generate an enormous share of America’s wealth are portrayed not as fellow citizens but as enemies within.
The language is strikingly familiar.
Occupation.
Liberation.
Enemies of the people.
Internal traitors.
Punishment.
Retaliation.
The object is not simply to win elections. It is to establish political control over institutions viewed as culturally alien. That is a profoundly different vision of America from the one many visitors encounter during this World Cup. MAGA America seeks to conquer liberal America because it feels that it has lost, that America has become the country of liberal, multicultural big cites, not the small towns and suburbs that is their homeland. It feels defeated, economically and culturally.
Football itself tells the story. International football has become one of the world’s great celebrations of migration.
Players represent countries through birth, ancestry, family history and movement across continents. Haiti’s centre-forward has never lived in Haiti. Australia’s squad includes 4 players born in refugee camps in Africa. The England team has more players with family from Kingston Jamaica than Kingston on Hull. America’s star midfield player was born in Durham and was the year below my daughter at St Margarets.
Migration is not an exception. It is the modern game. So too with the cities hosting this tournament. These are places built by successive waves of immigration.They are among the most internationally connected places on earth.
They are precisely the America that much of MAGA politics describes as broken. Yet they are also the America that millions of visitors are experiencing this summer.
This is the real significance of America’s 250th birthday.
There have always been competing visions of the republic. Federalist and anti-federalist. Slave owner and emancipator. Union and Confederate. One looks outward with confidence, assuming America grows stronger by attracting talent, welcoming newcomers and engaging with the world. The other looks inward, seeing decline everywhere and believing renewal comes through exclusion, cultural purity and the concentration of power. One holds to a civic nationalism, which defines being American as a question of attitudes and values. The other views being American as a product of blood and soil.
Both claim the Founding Fathers as their inheritance. Both wrap themselves in the Stars and Stripes. But crucially it is the taxes paid by the prosperous, diverse confident America that subsidises the other one. The resentment MAGA feels towards diverse big cities doesn’t stop them from cashing the cheques.
But only one of them is hosting the World Cup. The other is watching NSCAR and WWE.
The world cup has given America, and the rest of the world, a respite. For once Trump isn’t front and centre demanding that we pay attention to him, stamping his feet like an angry child high on sugary drinks. Something has come along louder and more exciting. It is refreshing to be able to watch America without Trump and his clique, a reminder that America isn’t Trump, it isn’t MAGA, and that their attempted take over of the USA isn’t complete.
As the fireworks light the sky on Independence Day, it’s not a question of whether America has lost its identity. But which America is actually celebrating.
And for those who want to dig deeper into America’s last 250 years here is a short quiz