Ice, Ice Baby: America's national decline

The 250th anniversary is corrupt, embarrassing and an utter failure. It's the perfect encapsulation of Trump's US.

Photo by Ryan Stone on Unsplash

It’s not going well. There are many definitions of failure, but Vanilla Ice has historically been the most widely accepted. In cultures across the world and in different eras, Vanilla Ice has functioned as one of the key metrics for decline, the gold standard measurement for what happens when you’re a gurning cunt.

The ancient Egyptians used to feature him on the inside of a Pharaoh’s tomb. The Normans stitched images of him looming over the battle scenes in the Bayeux Tapestry. It is a rule as old as time: If your country is relying on Vanilla Ice to save its national reputation, then something has gone horribly wrong.

Now he has come again, like Halley’s Comet, to inflict a devastating moment of humiliation on America’s 250th birthday. The problem began when the artists who had been booked to perform at the celebrations realised what was happening. What had been presented to them as an event for the country as a whole was in fact a piece of idol-worship for an insane president.

Seven of the nine musical acts pulled out. “What? What are you talking about?” Freedom Williams said, in a post filmed in a bathroom. “I don’t fuck with Trump… I know where I stand. I know who the fuck I am.”

In the end, and with the lamentations of history, there was just Vanilla Ice and one other act. He posted an Instagram video insisting he was still up for it, circling a pool while trying to quell a sense of growing existential terror. “I’m super honoured to do this concert with everybody,” he said plaintively. But in the end, even this was not possible. The concert had to be cancelled because of the weather.

America’s 250th celebration is a disaster. It is so bad that it has even failed to hold a Vanilla Ice concert.

A Trump speech on the mall last week was sparsely attended. The Great American State Fair, which has taken over downtown Washington, is a debacle. There’s hardly anyone there. Several states declined to send representatives, leaving their booths empty. The air conditioning in several booths stopped working in the middle of a heat wave, forcing them to close down.

Attendees are not allowed to bring food or water and the only shaded space to sit is in a food tent, where visitors can buy a bottle of water for $5, or the Phorm energy drink by Ultimate Fighting Championship president and Trump ally Dana White. On the fair’s first full day, a man was arrested after witnesses saw him filming female performers while vaping, with one hand down his pants.

The US Semiquincentennial stopped being about American history the moment Trump returned to office. At that point it became about corruption. This followed the standard populist pattern, established by Vladimir Putin and VIktor Orban and then replicated across the world. The corruption feeds the political narrative, which then assists with the corruption, in a closed circle of mutual advantage.

A report this week by the Democratic staff of the House of Representatives’ natural resources committee’s oversight and investigations subcommittee documented how this was done.

In 2016, Congress established an independent, non-partisan Semiquincentennial Commission to organise the celebrations. It established America250, which was intended to lead celebrations for everyone, regardless of their political views or the character of the current administration. Financially, it was grounded in the Congressionally chartered National Park Foundation - the official philanthropic partner of the National Park Service. These are old, reliable organisations with heritage and a long-earned sense of public trust.

Then Trump got into power and naturally tried to turn it into a form of emperor worship towards himself. When America250 kicked back against his demands for political propaganda and personal fealty, the White House established Freedom 250 LLC as a wholly owned subsidiary of the National Park Foundation. It allowed Trump and his allies to operate under the credibility and reputation of the brand but avoid any requirement for accountability or transparency.

Funds were surreptitiously diverted, leaving America250 starved of cash. Sources interviewed by Democrats on the committee said prospective America250 donors were actually provided with Freedom 250’s bank details. This would be wire fraud, if America still had a functioning legal system. Sponsorship packages were turned into a classic corruption racket, with people paying $10 million for guaranteed time with Trump, complete with a “historic photo opportunity”.

It then worked to steer funding towards campaign loyalists, in much the same way that Orban would direct funding towards his supporters. Event Strategies, which planned the January 6th rally which preceded the attempted coup, was awarded 18 federal contracts and an indefinite master contract, worth a combined $140 million.

Perhaps the most gauche last-days-of-Rome moment came when an Ultimate Fighting Championship event was held on the South Lawn to celebrate Trump’s 80th birthday. The statue of Abraham Lincoln looked down on the spectacle below and it honestly felt as if his face would twist into disapproval, the nation’s father turning in his grave as his children squandered the constitutional riches he left them.

Quite apart from the sense of cultural degeneracy, it was an act of blatant corruption, run without any sense of shame or concealment. The event was sponsored by companies facing federal regulation. Fighters received bonuses in a cryptocurrency issued by World Liberty Financial, a trust run by Trump’s children, which he holds stocks in.

“Under President Donald Trump, this anniversary has been hijacked and perverted into a hotbed of corruption and self-enrichment,” the Congressional report concluded. “The machinery built for a national commemoration was converted, deliberately and over a period of months, into an apparatus for raising and spending money in service of the president’s ego, political ideology, and pet projects.”

This is the anniversary that America deserves.

I was talking with a friend the other day about the celebrations. He loves America, is fascinated with it, knows its history well, adores its music and its films. His reaction when the subject came up was instantaneous. “They haven’t got a thing to be proud of. They don’t have anything to celebrate.”

We rarely speak about the wave of anti-Americanism sweeping the world. News reports still operate as if America has an assumed leadership role - not just militarily or economically, but culturally. Yet its reputation is tanking. Global polling found that the proportion of people who believed it had an overall positive influence on world affairs fell in 26 out of 29 countries in the six months leading to April. In Britain, one of America’s most reliable allies, just 39% believe it has a positive influence. In France, its oldest ally, it’s 30%. In Canada, its closest ally, it’s 19%.

Four million fewer foreign visitors went to the US in 2025 compared to 2024, with total spending decreasing by more than $8 billion. It’s the worst single-year decline in two decades outside of covid. “We used to be a country that others wanted to emulate,” Juliette Kayyem, faculty chair of the Homeland Security Project at the Harvard Kennedy School, said forlornly. “That narrative no longer exists.”

It is easy to blame Trump, to say that this is not the real America and that he is some a horrible contorted version of its true face. Perhaps it was still possible to hold that view between 2016 and 2020. But by the time he was elected a second time, it was clear that many Americans either approved of what he represented or were sufficiently ambivalent to wave him through.

This point is usually made in relation to the US’ domestic politics. But it is also true about the way that America sees the world. We now have a pretty good impression of how many Americans see us and what they truly think of us. We know that, because Trump is commendably clear. He and JD Vance and Pete Hegseth and the others seem to resent the rest of the world. They admire strongmen leaders, sure, but their allies are there to be bullied, mocked, disparaged and humiliated. When it came to election day, most American voters either approved or didn’t object.

It is hard to square this version of America with the one you experience when you’re there: the nice lady in the queue at the airport who wants to talk about her son-in-law, the eccentric wiseguy taxi driver, the bloke who sits down next to you by the bar and starts up a conversation, the great social openness of the American personality. But we have to accept that this is obviously a core aspect of what the country is. If it wasn’t, it would not be happening.

It is particularly vexing to find that America’s core message to the world is now one of victimhood. Every day, Trump has some new sob story he wants to tell, about how unfair trade is, how much money America spends on the military, why everyone has taken advantage of them. This would be grating from anyone but it is particularly irritating from the US.

This is a country that committed genocide against its indigenous population, enslaved black people, fought a civil war to avoid freeing them, secured superpower status by its late entry into two world wars, sponsored murder and tyranny in some of the poorest countries on earth, and has enjoyed the outrageous benefits of its own global order and world reserve currency. It has vast natural resources and a level of material wealth which is without precedent in the history of man. And what has it done with it? Banked it, enjoyed it, and now complained about what a hard time it’s having.

When Trump imposed his Liberation Day tariffs he took time out to complain about how unfair Vietnam had been to the US. Vietnam, for god sake. I might just keep writing it again and again. Vietnam. Fucking Vietnam. Is there a better example of the state of complete moral myopia which the nation has descended to?

It felt for a while, when I was growing up, that America might occasionally feel a bit of guilt over what it did in Vietnam. We had all those years watching films about the war, some of them among the greatest films of the 20th Century.

But perhaps those films told us something else. Apocalypse Now, Full Metal Jacket, The Deer Hunter. I love many of these films, but none of them were about what happened to the Vietnamese. They were about how massacring Vietnamese people was really difficult for young American men and hurt them very much. There was no real moment of introspection, except that which was pertinent to its own countrymen. And that is how you come to this orange crybaby saying how mean the Vietnamese are to America because the Americans want to buy their stuff.

There’s a better part to the American personality, but you wouldn’t want to rely on it. The horrible reality, and it is one which we shouldn’t shy away from out of mere politeness, is that this is the anniversary which America deserves. It is corrupt, tawdry, embarrassing, a failure. It perfectly encapsulates this moment in the country’s history.

For a long time, Trump imagined this summer would be the pinnacle of his second term. The semiquincentennial would take place at the same time as the World Cup - split between the US, Mexico and Canada - and turn the world’s eyes toward the US, with him upon the throne. He has been building towards this for years.

And yet Trump has not attended any World Cup games. He has not gone to any of the stadiums. And there is, of course, a very good reason for that. It is not safe for him.

He can’t even safely attend basketball matches. When he attended the NBA finals in Madison Square Garden last month, he was loudly booed by the fans. If he went to a World Cup game, things would be much worse. The world has none of the vestigial respect for his head-of-state position which Americans might retain. He would be met by any of a variety of songs. These include, but are not limited to, Australia’s “Aussie boys, we’re on a bender, Donald Trump is a sex offender” and England’s “He’s fat with piles, he’s in the Epstein files, Trump the cunt, Trump the cunt.”

Trump has been completely excluded from the World Cup. What initially felt like an event which would be tainted by his participation has been saved by the fact that he cannot safely attend. His fear of an international crowd has prevented him from securing any reflected glory. All that obsequious boot-licking from Giovanni Infantino, with his imaginary Fifa Nobel peace prize, was for nothing. The moment that the fans became involved, it was clear that they would annihilate Trump’s dignity the moment they were given the chance.

And then the World Cup did what it does. It took the sad, tawdry reality that constitutes it and made it beautiful.

There is no other event like this, in its emotional breadth or its depth. For one brief moment, the world is united in one storyline, which is about how to beat each other by kicking a ball. Absurd, but there we are. During the World Cup, I can message my cousins on the other side of the world and know for a fact that they will be watching the same thing I am watching. There is no other time that this is the case. There is no other moment in which so many countries become fiercely, passionately involved in one narrative. It is the greatest unifying spectacle on earth. And no amount of Fifa corruption or cynical ticket pricing can contradict that.

Then, just for a moment, there was a little ray of hope, a shaft of light: a reminder of a better America.

It came on social media, flowering out from online videos to news reports on TV channels. The people of Boston were evidently delighted by Scottish football fans, who literally drank the city dry. They discovered the mystical Scottish need to steal traffic cones and put them on the heads of statues. Their baseball games - usually genteel family affairs - were turned into raucous singalongs, as Scottish fans just kept on belting out the tunes, indifferent to the usual way of doing things. They mixed with a level of enthusiasm and gregariousness that makes you suspect that, in nine months’ time, a wave of Scottish-American children will be born, constituting a new demographic subgroup in the nation’s patchwork identity.

It wasn’t simply that Boston was delighted by Scotland. It was how delightful it was to watch Boston be delighted. There is something so satisfying and healthy about watching a country enjoy the culture of another country, about watching a country host well. Suddenly the visa requirements and the airport security checks and the threats of ICE agents in stadiums seemed very far away, replaced by the joy of cultures mixing together under the life-affirming influence of beer.

Then visiting fans started posting videos reacting with wonder at American food, and in particular one of the greatest American cultural inventions of the 20th Century: the free refill.

Obviously, it was all highly questionable. Many of these videos were made by people playing a persona, or had been released before the World Cup, or were a bit contrived. But none of that mattered. The medium and the subject matter and even the veracity were unimportant.

All that really mattered was that people from one culture were enjoying something from another culture. America experienced the joy of watching someone arrive and like you. The magic is not in the initial delight, but in our delight at people’s delight. Regardless of how authentic those videos were, America enjoyed seeing itself through another’s eyes. This was a better place than the one we’d seen recently, somewhere that still wanted to be open and welcome and charming.

For a moment, you wondered if it might have some effect. Isn’t it pleasant, being liked rather than being hated? Isn’t it far better to treat other countries nicely and have them treat you nicely in return? Isn’t there a better, more dignified and joyous way to behave, than the manner in which you have been recently? What happened to the version of America that was open to the world? The America the world wanted to visit?

We can’t pretend that the World Cup will fix these problems, or that this is any more than a passing glimmer of light. But it is a reminder, at least, that there is a better America in there somewhere, underneath all that vicious victimhood and unconcealed aggression.

Its return can’t come quickly enough.

Odds and sods

You can listen to this newsletter as a podcast at the top of the page or on Spotify. You can follow me on BlueSky, Instagram or TikTok.

Couple of pieces in the i paper this week - one on Nigel Farage’s insatiable fucking greed and how it’s starting to properly hurt him and another on Morgan McSweeney’s childlike realisation that it’s better when you actually do some work to prepare for government. Thanks Morgan, great stuff, really appreciated.

This week’s Origin Story is on Paranormal Investigators. It’s a weird spooky story of people running around claiming to have discovered proof of the afterlife and being unable to replicate their findings.

We start in the Victorian period, with an intoxicating blend of outright hysterics and some rather more somber empirical types and end up in 21st Century America, where a bunch of out-and-out charlatans exploit some very fucked up people for money. It’s a tale of hard cash, horror films, the Catholic church, evidence-based beliefs and things that go bump in the night. You can listen to it here or watch it below. And you can buy tickets to our next live show at London’s beautiful Union Chapel here. Buy the fucking ticket you cunt.

If you want some more podcast action I was also on Fast Politics with my friend Molly Jong-Fast, in which I try to explain Starmer and Burnham but really just sit there being abused by her breezy dismissal of my nation.

This week I read The Score: How to Stop Playing Someone Else’s Game, by C.Thi Nguyen. It suffers from the problem you often get with books like these, which is that it has one idea and the book unnecessarily expands to turn that idea into a viable commercial proposition in the publishing industry. It would be better as a 10,000 word article. However, it is saved by the fact that this idea is, I think, of tremendous importance. It is potentially life altering.

It concerns the gap between the utility we get from an activity and the scoring system society projects on it. Nguyen paints a portrait of a world which is lost in metrics: protein intake, academic research scores, house prices, arrest targets, waiting times, social media likes, technical specs, sporting stats. His argument is that our attachment to these metrics as a way of evaluating our level of success takes us away from the benefit of the underlying activity.

The core concept is called value capture: “When you get your values from some external source and let them rule you without adapting them”.

I think this is profound. It is one of those ideas that you start to see everywhere. It can be tremendously liberating when you apply it to your own life.

The book is available here and you can watch him chat about it below.

Right, that’s it this week. Fuck off. I’m off for some non-metric fun.