Here we are as the United States celebrates its 250th anniversary–struggling with the country that we have become, and the one we will agree to be if we can make it to the 300th.
Ted Anthony of the Associated Press (in two related articles) makes the case that America’s identity has always been shaped by the stories it tells about itself. Stories of freedom, opportunity, and national purpose. But along with that are myths, contradictions, and competing visions. From the frontier to Hollywood and social media, storytelling has united Americans while simultaneously fueling conflict over whose version of history prevails.
Legendary and mythical stories of our nationhood grew from the generations after the founding fathers died, evolving to the clash of national visions over which we fought the Civil War. Today, after new technologies of media have taken over our view of the world — film, television, and then the Internet — that struggle is really intense. Political leaders, artists, educators, and ordinary citizens compete to define what it means to be American.
As Colin Woodard, author of Union: The Struggle to Forge the Story of United States Nationhood, sums it up: โWe didnโt have an ancient homeland. We had nothing. So โฆ you needed a story. People need stories of belonging.โ
Shilpa Davรฉ, a media studies scholar who focuses on race and gender in popular culture, contends that the struggle is really about who gets to pursue the ideals of the American story.
The efforts of a certain narcissistic despot to reshape the national narrative around his personal vision of America are rooted in the nation’s shared myths. โThe best and worst leaders build themselves out of stories,โ writes James Poniewozik in Audience of One: Donald Trump, Television and the Fracturing of America. โThey use their cultureโs language … to express what literal language canโt.โ
But Anthony also notes how musicians, historians, and others are reclaiming patriotic symbols to tell different stories. Even the American flag has become a symbol interpreted in sharply different ways across political and cultural divides.
The author concludes that the American story remains unfinished. As the nation grows more diverse and polarized, the central question is not only what America’s story is, but who will shape the next chapterโand whether a shared national narrative can still unite people with profoundly different experiences and beliefs.
Summarized from “Even 250 years in, the battle over the American story โ and who gets to tell it โ endures” (July 6, 2026) and “The American story, splintered, and those vying to tell it” (June 3, 2020) by Ted Anthony, Associated Press.
Image (background): 1905 view of Tศuลkรกลกila ล รกkpe (“The Six Grandfathers”) in South Dakota, so named by the Lakota as a vision of the six sacred directions (north, south, east, west, above, and below), 22 years before getting dynamited to represent competing myths.