The Wet And Wild Freedom Day Catastrophe
There Is No Joy In Mudville, Not Even For The Right
The trouble started shortly after I occupied the deserted Department of Justice booth at the Great American State Fair and began to charge my cell phone.
I don’t know how long the Department of Justice booth sat empty before I got there, or who stripped it bare of everything save three folding chairs, a scuffed card table, and a battered backdrop held in place with three neon yellow sandbags. But I know administrations who use subtext, and they’re all cowards. I audibly gasped when I discovered it, then muttered “no fucking way” as I fumbled for my phone and snapped several photos.
Then, for a time, I moved on, for there were many more departments to explore.
Most pictures of the Great American State Fair taken during the lead-up to July 4th show a vast, near-empty stretch of the Washington Mall with two long, low buildings on each side. The mall wasn’t empty on July 4th—that was always going to be the day most people flew in to visit, and the lawn was plenty crowded that day.
Everything, else, however, was even worse than it looks in pictures: smaller, dingier, sadder. Film cannot fully replicate the experience of walking towards an Arch that looks quite normal, only for the wrongness to gradually become evident as you approach: badly-stapled canvas that highlights rather than disguises poor construction, smudges and divots and foam oozing out of the cracks. You may already know that the neoclassical arches and bas reliefs on those long low buildings are actually just canvas stapled onto the side of structures halfway between a trailer and a tent, but you cannot experience the disquieting failure of that optical illusion to shift with you as you walk rapidly down the center of the Mall. It feels like some amateur video game designer inserted his childish rendered buildings into physical reality.
Those poorly-rendered trailer/tents have identical doors. The doors lead into small rooms, and those rooms contain multitudes. You might find yourself in the midst of the Small Business of the Future Art Competition, where kids can express themselves in crayon, put their parents’ information on the back, and potentially win what a booth attendant described to me as “a coin or something, I don’t really know.” You may get an opportunity to photograph yourself next to a giant stuffed bear, or a buffalo, or a ‘50s stand microphone with Elvis shaking his hips in the background. You might stumble upon the Dowdle Puzzle room, which sells jigsaw puzzles of folksy representations of every major American City—and also a George Washington quote, illuminated like a Medieval manuscript, about how important it is for our government to be Christian.
One of the stranger experiences at the Great American State Fair is stumbling on small, unexpected islands of normalcy within this sea of MAGAficafion. The opportunity to take a picture with a stuffed bear at a West Virginia picnic table, a Louisiana trivia contest, a Colorado white-water rafting game. The DC Metro’s enormous and lovingly-crafted exhibit inside three full-sized subway cars on a mock-up railroad line, filled with cool facts about its history and utility. It’s not a very exciting exhibit, but it’s an apolitical celebration of an American achievement, which is probably why Freedom250 chose to place it far away from everything else, hidden from the fair’s main drag by one of those faux-neoclassical tent/trailer things and an enormous Christian revival tent.
Some of the more boring state departments, like the Passport Office and Housing and Urban Development, also deliver the practical, informative, slightly boring displays one might expect. But then there’s the Department of Transportation’s exhibit which, aside from a few generic platitudes, revolves entirely around former Road Rules contestant and current Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy’s Great American Road Trip initiative. There’s the Department of Education, which exclusively displays floor-to-ceiling propaganda banners from private far-right institutions that present their version of American history, plus QR codes where you can learn more. I wrote about one of those groups, Patriot Academy, way back in 2022 after attending their Constitutional Self Defense course, which combined intensive handgun training with classes on the biblical origins of our Constitution.
What shreds remain of institutional normalcy serve only to highlight the weirdness of everything else. No free C-SPAN ruler with portraits of all 45 past presidents on the back can compete with the Christian/American Flag slash fic in the middle of the American Made exhibit, or the red baseball cap for sale the Freedom 250 merch room with “America Is Back” emblazoned across it in Trumpian script. Everyone, including the booth attendents, takes it for granted that everyone there is Republican.
The Best Laid Plans
The Great American State Fair is very easy to make fun of, and there are many hilarious articles that do a fantastic job of lampooning its many absurdities. I needed a different angle to make this trip worthwhile, and when the DC State booth attendant handed me the fair’s novelty passport, I thought I'd found it. I would visit every state/territory booth, describe them, and rank them. I would give out fake awards, like:
Most Wholesome: West Virginia
Most Sponsored by Purdue Chicken: Georgia
Most Clearly Constructed At Gunpoint: Washington DC
Most Hot Guys Teaching Middle America How To Salsa: Puerto Rico
And, despite stiff competition:
Most Fuck You: Oregon
And that’s what this whole article would be, I guess, if things hadn’t gone completely off the rails around 8:00 PM.
July 4th, 2026 was the hottest on record for DC; 103 degrees of swamp heat, with humidity that squashes you into the pavement and a sun that kicks you while you’re down there. But around 6:30 PM, the clouds started to roll in. A violent gust nearly knocked my phone out of my hand. “On the bright side,” I posted as the sky continued to darken, “perhaps we will all be struck by lightning.”
One thing that definitely required lightning at that point was my phone—tame lightning, but lightning nonetheless. The only equipment left in that deserted DOJ booth, aside from that table and chairs, was an abandoned extension cord eager for some enterprising hand to slam a charger into it. My enterprising hand. I took over the Department of Justice, commandeered their electricity, and waited for my phone to recover
Maybe five minutes after I got comfortable, the speakers outside crackled to life with an announcement that would run on loop for at least an hour and a half. Due to inclement weather, the Great American State Fair was “temporarily postponed.” All attendees must exit the fairgrounds and seek shelter, either in their cars or the surrounding buildings. Check social media for updates.
Like most people inside these fairgrounds, I’d already waited an hour beneath the sledgehammer sun to get screened by TSA-lite, and I was still salty about them forcing me to throw away my nice G-2 pen. If I left and they reopened, I’d have to wait in an even longer line and might not make it through in time. Meanwhile, here at the Department of Justice, I had electricity, a roof over my head, a bag of Sour Patch Kids the security personnel missed while attempting to sabotage my ability to write things down, a notepad, and the backup pen they’d missed: all the basic necessities of life. Why leave before they made me?
By the time a fair employee found me and gently, professionally, yet firmly asked me to leave, my phone was up to 45 percent, which would have to be enough. Yet outside my hiding place, hundreds still remained. They too had waited in that line, and saw little point in leaving for a storm that would be just as active outside the fence as within it. It was the only rational choice. This is Trump's America, and rule-following is for suckers and losers. Why not stay put, get a little wet, and guarantee a spot for the fireworks in a few hours? It’s the same decision I’d made inside the DOJ, and I made it again beneath that darkening sky.
And so, for an hour and a half, we stood around, joked about free showers, and gaped at the fighter jets that continued to buzz the fairgrounds every few minutes despite the worsening weather. Every plane, that whole day, instantly transformed me into a five-year-old again. BIG PLANE!! BIG PLANE!! BIG PLANE DOING BARREL ROLLS!!!! Then the savage birds would vanish into the great wide sky and I would remember that my country is dying. Come back, fighter jets. Come back and make me five again.
We hung on until 8:00 PM, and honestly I was starting to think we might make it all the way through…until I saw the flashing lights and heard the wail of sirens. Protest flashbacks as a line of motorcycle cops began to herd us wayward attendees ahead of them like so many lost sheep: down the length of the mall and into the funnel of the Western exit.
It was at this point, as the cops began to escort us past the throng of thousands of people already pressed against the gates, waiting to be admitted; as discontented rumblings began to surge up from the rag-tag crowd of holdouts, as the first drops of rain began to fall, that events began to go pear-shaped.
Here’s the thing: the announcement told us to shelter in our cars, but most fairgoers did not drive in—in fact, we were encouraged not to because of parking limitations. It told us to seek shelter in nearby buildings, but all those buildings are either museums or government buildings and it is 8:00 PM on a national holiday so no, that wasn’t happening either. It told us to check social media for further updates, but the fair’s accounts had not even acknowledged the closure, never mind provided additional information. And we’d been explicitly told that the closure would be temporary. Why would anyone go home?
The only place for these tens of thousands to go, realistically, was the streets outside the event, which is exactly what happened: a crush of bodies clustered at the entrance points and choking off traffic for blocks. Everyone is just as exposed to the elements out here as we were in there, except now we are angrily bunched together with nothing to do but endure the storm and stew about the stupidity of it all. The National Guard clusters in groups of four and five at the outskirts of this throng, but they are brutally outnumbered by thousands of disgruntled fairgoers.
These ingredients can only make a few things, and none of them are good.
It will never not be hilarious to watch the Right begin to realize they're on the wrong side of the police. Motorcycle cops drive through the crowd, sirens blaring, in an attempt to keep a path open for the continuous parade of ambulances necessary to extract people as they collapsed from dehydration or stress or physical exertion. An LRAD system begins to shout unintelligible orders in our general direction, all while the people the LRAD is yelling at are cheering the police. “Why are we clapping?” the man behind me asks. No one bothers to reply
No one knows when or where the gates will open, but most of us have been through security already and we know how slow they are. The only way any of us are getting back in before the fireworks start is to get to the front of the line by any means necessary. The rain begins to fall in earnest; tension swells and crackles through the crowd. A bearded millennial nearly comes to blows with a smooth-cheeked Gen-Zer who starts imperiously shouting orders and unilaterally attempting to direct traffic. The cops are also still shouting through the LRAD, but we still can’t understand him. Perhaps they are worried about hurting the eardrums of their MAGA brethren.
All I can say, as someone who’s attended countless left-wing protests, is that it must be nice. If the left even considered blocking traffic to this extent, the entire city would smell like tear gas and the New York Times would have already written at least two op-eds about this Not Being The Right Way To Do Things. Instead, ambulances creep through this crowd at a snail’s pace, sirens blaring, as the rain soaked us to the skin.
The crowd grows ever more restless, and starts to condense and pulse with those dangerous little shoves that can become an all-out stampede with the slightest provocation. Someone calls for a medic and a drunk gentleman responds with an attempted chant of “USA!” He is quickly shushed.
The pressure behind us has pushed me into the ambulance’s path and I squeeze backwards as the side mirror passes within inches of my nose. The moment it moves past, the crowd packs into the space behind the vehicle and moves with it down the road. The rain is getting worse. How many people are aware of the danger we’re in? Not enough, I fear. I move with the crowd and brace for impact.
The next surge is driven by forward momentum instead of panic, thank God, and we advance several yards down the street. A cheer goes up— the gates must be open, and we’re the ones moving forward! It seems the assholes—the ones who blocked the street, who followed the ambulance, who refused to disperse—will be first into the breach, first through those gates, first to secure a coveted spot beneath the obelisk and relax for the rest of the evening. The crowd sings God Bless America as it shuffles forward, pressed together like penguins in an Antarctic winter storm.
Eventually, the forward movement stops. The rain is growing heavier. A few people have umbrellas, which is very nice for them and much less nice for the people beside them, who are periodically drenched as the rain runs off the sides. I am one of these people, but it’s fine; I have reached that zen stage where I cannot possibly get any wetter, and I am abuzz with adrenaline and schadenfreude. This situation is absolutely miserable, and I’m having a wonderful time.
Renewed hope from our forward momentum has left the crowd exuberant. A drunk man behind me begins to shout. “THIS IS AMERICA! I CAN FUCK ANYTHING I WANT TO! ANY TIME! BAAAAABY!!” He is yelling for the sake of yelling and not at a specific person, and so it is very funny, or at least I find it so. Eventually, as the rain grows heavier and we fail to move forward, his performance takes a maudlin turn. “I CASHED OUT MY RETIREMENT TO BE HERE! FUCK TRUMP!! I AIN’T SEEN HIM ONCE!!” He’s still joking, but there’s truth within that tone shift.
A nearby man begins to complain about how CNN keeps saying no one is here and what liars they are, malicious lying liars who love to lie, just like they did with the “mostly peaceful protests” of 2020. In the dog world, we call this displaced aggression. “You should watch Dan Bongino,” he tells a nearby woman. She asks the question I am bursting to ask, more politely than I would have asked it: if he's such a great guy, why did he leave the FBI and return to podcasting instead of providing insider proof of the conspiracies he spreads? Bongino always said he’d leave after a year, the man insists, which I don't remember him saying before his tenure ended, but that could be the Trump Derangement Syndrome talking. “Wow, it takes a lot of courage to step away like that,” the woman replies. I am grinding my teeth like Don Jr at 4AM. Or 4PM. Or whenever.
The woman, who is slightly more in touch with her emotions, remarks that it seems very silly to have kicked us out of the fair for safety reasons only to have us gather outside in far less safe conditions, and I express my agreement. She pauses, then speculates that perhaps there was a credible threat that forced them to clear the fairgrounds—a threat they kept quiet so as not to alarm anyone. “This feels like bureaucracy to me,” I reply, and the conversation ends amicably.
Operatic music swells suddenly from the stage just beyond us huddled masses. The event is getting started and yet here we stand: drenched and dehydrated all at once, tired after a long hot day. That earlier ebullience is completely gone. Two men start shouting a few rows behind me, and then punches start to fly. The crowd screams for the police. “They’re grabbing women, they’re peeing in public!” someone shouts. The National Guard wades in to grab them as the crowd chants “Fuck him up!”
Minutes later, as Bohemian Rhapsody begins to play, a nearby woman collapses. The National Guard rushes forward once more, and she is limp in their arms for what seems like a dangerous amount of time before half-regaining consciousness. The Guard extracts her, which seems to be the only way out of the crowd at this point. We’re too packed in to go back, and the front hasn’t moved in a very long time.
Someone starts shouting that people to the right of us are moving, but that the gates in front of us are blocked. “Move right!” he shouts, and the crowd lurches dangerously in that direction, but there's no spirit in it and anyway he’s wrong: no one is moving, we’re all trapped here together. A cry goes up: a chant of “Open the Gates!” Inside, Axl Rose is crooning: “It's hard to hold a candle in the cold November rain.”
Despair washes over us. My poor phone is at 6 percent power and falling fast. There’s no getting out of this crush without getting arrested or passing out, and I’m not particularly keen on either thing. This is my life now: forever sweating through my rain-soaked shirt in the DC swamp, surrounded by sweaty, furious MAGA. Over the speakers, Ave Maria begins to play.
An eternity later, we have pushed forward to the point where we can see the large, cheerful banner over the main entrance: “Welcome to SALUTE AMERICA.” Below it, the security checkpoint is deserted: no lights, no personnel, no movement. “Tell us what’s happening! Give us a SITREP!” someone shouts at one of the National Guardsman standing ready to retrieve the next inevitable casualty.
The Guardsman hesitates, then points past the gates and down the street in front of us with a sweeping motion. “The only gate that’s open is way the shit down there!!” he shouts.
It can’t be! All this time, all this misery! The crowd’s voice rises in a furious chant: “LET US IN! LET US IN!” The first strains of “God Bless the USA” provokes a whole new level of despair: This is the song Trump always plays before walking out and we are MISSING IT. “Our tax dollars paid for this!!” someone screams.
A resigned calm briefly settles over the crowd as the song finishes. Silence…and then that unmistakable Trumpian cadence. The few scattered cheers fade into silence as the awful truth sinks in. The reverberation is too much. We can hear his voice, but not what he is saying.
The crowd erupts in a primal, howling BOOOOOOOOOOO!, which morphs into one final, desperate chant: “LET US IN! LET US IN!”
“Open the gates, retard!” someone yells as the chant fades out. But nothing happens. We have exhausted all options, and the rage fades into emptiness. These people cannot be mad at Trump for long, and nothing else remains.
As the incomprehensible Trump noise washes over us, people start talking to each other about their home states, their jobs, their hobbies: anything but the situation at hand. A nice older gentleman tells me about the mountains he climbed in his youth. A young man who kindly lent me his charging brick when he saw my phone die tells me about his internship in Maryland. The Dan Bongino fan introduces himself with a friendly smile. We shake hands.
Every now and then, some word or phrase from Trump rings out comprehensibly from the babble of reverb. Per my scribbled notes: “Liberty…precious like never before…safe and productive than ever before…everybody watching, everybody watching.”
“You know what we want to watch?” a woman behind me says. We've missed the Trump speech: fine. But at least there will be fireworks, the greatest fireworks anyone has ever seen: 850,000 of them, all across the sky for over half an hour…as soon as Trump stops talking
Our President was scheduled to begin his big speech at 9:00 PM but didn’t actually start until 11:15, perhaps because he feared a lightning bolt from God would strike him down, perhaps because he disliked the idea of speaking to a soaked and empty field. He'd promised to give a long speech, “just to show I can,” because nothing broadcasts health and vitality like insisting you’re strong enough to stand for a couple hours. But it's so late. Surely he'll cut things short. There's not a lot of July 4th left.
And he does cut it short—but not short enough. The clock strikes midnight. A new day begins. America’s semiquincentennial Independence Day is officially over.
Independence Day is not a complicated holiday. Fairs, barbeque, entertainment: all nice, all ultimately optional. The only thing that absolutely has to happen is the fireworks…and Trump fucked it up because he couldn't stop talking.
At last, several minutes after midnight, he wraps up. The music begins to play. This is it. It's finally here: the moment all this suffering pays off.
Now friends, this has been an article full of schadenfreude.
We've all had a good time here.
What if I told you the best was yet to come?
What if I told you that, after four miserable, soaking, desperate hours, our view of the fireworks was.......this?
What if I told you that at no point along the entire length of this particular line of thousands, which stretched for blocks and which I walked on my way out, did anyone have a better view than this one?
What if I told you that, by the grand finale, the smoke was so thick that the fireworks were just a bombed-out orange glow: an artificial fog of war brought home by a bone-deep scorn for reality. Of aesthetics. Of everything but the biggest possible number.
Now look: I bear the individual people in that line no ill will. Everyone I spoke to during that hour of Trump blabbering on was very kind. They wanted to see fireworks. I'm sorry they didn't get to see them.
But also? Now their independence day matches my independence day.
I love this country. It's got a lot of problems, but it is my home and I want it to be good and I think it could be good. I love this country so much it hurts, and I wanted to celebrate our 250th Independence Day too. And the administration has made it so clear, throughout this whole event and every moment leading up to it, that they don't consider me, or anyone like me, to be a real American. I showed up, but my sort was neither invited to nor welcome at this DC celebration.
This has been the most spiritually bankrupt celebration of anything I've ever seen and that's it, that's our 250th. We don't get to go back and redo it, this one's in the books: Temu Arch, cheesy architecture, horrible displays, AI everywhere. Far right propaganda. Jokes at our expense.
So I am very sorry to the individuals who wanted a nice thing, but I wanted a nice thing too and instead I got this. And maybe, when you don't celebrate the whole country—EVERYONE who belongs here and lives here, even the people you don't care for—the celebration should go to shit and every single person should be miserable.
I posted something very much like that above as I walked back to my hostel, and as I did, the sky opened up and really, truly poured. God knows people who use subtext, and he too thinks they're cowards.
But the rain stopped eventually, because rain can't last forever. It never does. The 250th is over, well and good, but there are many July 4ths in our future, and they do not have to be like this one.
Here's a video I took just before the clouds rolled in while riding the Washington Mall Merry-Go-Round—the one left over from the World Fair, back when we could still do shit as a country. If you squint, you can almost see the celebration that should have been—and which we will someday have for real.
I can’t tell you how proud I am that Oregon got the Fuck You award. Free Beaver.
Oh, Laura, what a great piece of writing (supported with on the spot video). You know, I grew up in Washington, going to see the cherry blossoms, demonstrations on the Mall, Smithsonian Folklife Festivals, all the museums, fireworks on the 4th, all of that and to see it laid low like this is kind of heart breaking.
But your reporting is so good and so vivid, and so honest, that I feel like I was right there with you. Your point of view and your voice are so unique, your vision so clear, that it is just a delight. Keep at it, I am in awe.