Fourth of July

A Historical Tribute to Trump’s ‘Salute’

Donald Trump decreed that this year’s Independence Day celebrations, titled “Salute to America,” would involve a military parade featuring Army tanks and Air Force flyovers, as well as a presidential address before a ticketed VIP audience at the Lincoln Memorial. To mark the occasion, the editors prepared a visual history of military parades.

July 3, 2019

Say Goodbye, It’s Independence Day

Today’s Republican Party, like its president, is utterly unfettered by the constraining power of shame. The result is that conventions once deemed immovable have been exposed as far weaker than we understood—not worth the paper they weren’t written on.

July 3, 2018

My Fourth of July

Summer is the time when memories of other summers flood back. You lie on the beach, take a swim in the sea, or toss and turn at night unable to sleep because of the heat, and recall yourself doing the same in years past, or surprise yourself by remembering a half-forgotten, entirely different summer experience. The year is 1963. I’m on an army ship playing poker for high stakes in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. None of us has any money, but once we arrive in Brooklyn, get discharged and receive our pay, we’ll settle what we owe and collect what we have coming to us. I don’t believe this will happen, but I pretend I do and win and lose fortunes with the composure of a dissolute prince in a nineteenth-century Russian novel.

July 3, 2012