America deserves a better 250th birthday party

You can tell which Real Housewives are cool with the gays and which ones are not. For those who partake, Ashley Darby is definitely not MAGA, and it shows in her looks. America feels like the MAGA housewife right now. No one wants to do its glam. No one wants to design its gown. No one wants to take its picture. No one wants to take it to the club for its birthday.Which is unfortunate, because America is turning 250.Although America has given the world jazz, disco, hip-hop, punk, house music, drag, Linda Ronstadt, Dolly Parton, Prince, ballroom culture, Public Enemy, Hole, Buffalo wings, Springsteen, Beyoncé, Madonna, lobster rolls, The Hunting Wives, the airplane, Bad Bunny, The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City, and the deeply sacred tradition of getting too drunk at a state fair and throwing up next to a ride called the Gravitron, it is definitely not getting a great birthday party this year.Instead, America's 250th birthday is shaping up to be the mustiest, saddest county-fair-on-fentanyl nostalgia concert imaginable.For America's 250th birthday, Donald Trump and his orbit have assembled a national celebration so aggressively tacky, confusing, and spiritually empty that even some of the announced performers immediately began publicly distancing themselves from it like passengers escaping a sinking Carnival cruise ship simultaneously suffering from both hantavirus and norovirus.Nothing says "the enduring promise of American democracy" quite like Vanilla Ice, a UFC cage on the White House lawn, and screenings of National Treasure 2. Or, at this point in our national decline, perhaps it does.The event, dubbed the "Great American State Fair," somehow manages to feel both dystopian and impotent at the exact same time. It reads less like a historic national milestone and more like someone handed a regional casino entertainment coordinator access to federal infrastructure, a Pinterest account, and a moderate cocaine habit.And people are either laughing at the lineup o