An Expensive America 250

The breaking alert hit in my inbox at the most inopportune time.

I was in media res of shoveling a handful of America 250 Doritos in my maw, washing down the vestigial flakes with a can of America 250 Mountain Dew, while occasionally popping a couple America 250 Skittles or M&Ms (both exclusively tricolored) in between gulps of my fatty, nutritionless, MSG-laden snack. Just as the notification dinged, I hoisted by sluggard limbs off my hard-creased couch to the bathroom, where I, upon emptying my bowels of heaven knows how many pounds of ultra-processed starch, wiped with quad-ply America 250 Charmin Ultra. Then I washed my hands using America 250 Dial hand soap. Finally, I dried my mitts with a single sheet of America 250 Bounty.

Before heading back to the sofa to resume the Netflix “Stranger Things” marathon, sponsored by America 250, I swung by the fridge to snag a couple of slices of America 250 Oscar Mayer bologna, which I housed feral-style like Tony Soprano.

My gaze wandered to the box of America 250 Star-Spangled Blueberry Pop-Tarts, the next quarry in my hanker-hunt. That’s when my slimy, pulsing fingers fished my phone out of my America 250 Wrangler pocket and brought it before my hazed eyes. The alert overshadowed the update on my America 250 FanDuel parlay and the reminder to check out my favorite OnlyFans model’s new America Nude-Titty gallery.

“Breaking news: U.S. inflation jumps for third-straight month.”

Knowing my cardboard-pastry supply was running low, I made a prudent move in such a cashcrunched fiscal environment. I quickly nuke an America 250 limited-edition Nathan’s hot dog-stuffed Hot Pocket, bolting the entire scalding loaf right out of the microwave. The boys of Pointe du Hoc couldn’t be prouder of my farsighted patriotism!

In the past month, the Musk messageboard X has been a-chatter over the lack of enthusiasm for the 250th anniversary of our country’s break with Great Britain. Blue ticks repeat variations of “nobody cares about America anymore.” Writing in Commentary, Robert Pondiscio recalls the pride he felt on the bicentennial, when parades and TV specials and periodical covers were one long tapestry of red, white, and whoohooo! Now? We’ve gone from Castle Bravo to a sparkler. “Affection for the country must be hedged, explained, contextualized,” Pondiscio drearily explains. Rod Dreher echoes the mope in his Substack newsletter. In 1976, he recalls, “people were proud to be American. It doesn’t feel that way now.” Axios parrots the dolorousness with its feature, “America approaches 250 with its best days in doubt.”

(I could pull the garden-variety columnist hack of citing the oft-placed opinion poll, “Is the country heading in the right direction,” which probably hasn’t registered positive since the Truman Administration.)

These dirges, which all chime like ad-libbed laments that frequently fill out op-ed sections in major dailies, are workaday prosiness. We Yanks aren’t excited to ring in 250 years of constitutionally delimited self-governance? The entire bag of America 250 Hershey Kisses I just inhaled begs to differ. Every single Walmart aisle is stuffed with patriotic plasticine trinkets and gadgets that are wholly unnecessary but impossible to resist. America 250 ironing board; America 250 lemon peeler; America 250 disc golf set; America 250 cornholl boards; America 250 toasters; America 250 coasters; America 250 vuvuluzas; America 250 ratchet set; American 250 John Deere ride-on mower; America 250 F-150; America 250 Cool Whip with added sugar, transfat, and a variety of indescribable industrial chemicals typically used to process petroleum into unleaded gas.

Our commercial republic is honoring its own longevity with its best feature: endless enterprise!

But all is not well in the American body politic, and it’s not just the flood of microplastics replacing our blood cells. This historic birthday isn’t all fireworks, 12-gauge-shootoffs, and Beach Boys tunes on repeat. Ominous storm clouds gather behind our Grand Old Flag. They portend a scourge that’s toppled presidents, economies, societies, self-confidences. Abraham Lincoln famously described Americans as the “almost chosen people.” But instead of siccing locusts on a MidEast pharaoh (we prefer Tomahawk missiles), it is the United States that suffers under the plague of price-jumps.

Donald Trump was elected, in part, due to his predecessor’s inflation vault. Now he’s mired in the same soup: an incorrigible need to spend and borrow, which requires artificially low interest rates that, invecim, fuel monetary pumping. So the cost of all those America 250 novelties keeps its stubborn ascension. The escalating price tag of America 250 bibelots is the real damper on national sentiment, worse than sheets of rain on a truckfull of peony shells.

An uncomfortable question must be posed: Was it worth overtossing the British yoke if, two and a half centuries later, we have to pay $7-per-pound of ground beef?

“[A] country of beginnings, of projects, of vast designs and expectations,” is how Emerson once praised America. Now it’s too high an expectation to not feel burgled at the grocery store.

Maybe it’s best to enjoy a houseful of America 250 merch, even if your wallet thins to nothing.