Last week, after flying home to America for the first time since Donald Trump’s re-election, I made the familiar five-hour drive north from San Francisco to Lake Almanor. This part of California is one of the most MAGA-friendly counties in the state. In 2024, Trump won the seat by nearly 17 points. I’ve been coming to this part of the West Coast for years, joining my best friend and her family to celebrate the Fourth of July – a weekend full of delightfully kitsch Americana. There’s the annual golf cart parade bedecked with American flags and sparkles, a rodeo, a fireworks show on the lake. I grew up in a similar town in South Carolina, where the Fourth of July was an annual event replete with family traditions: the dessert pies the mothers baked, the meats the fathers barbecued, the brand of fireworks the kids were sent off to buy at the nearest petrol station. In American mythology, this has always been a day when everyone could celebrate something that felt unifying: the idea of being American. Even in its darkest moments, this was still a country in which progress was deemed possible, one where those who demanded justice would one day be able to bend the arc toward a better place. But this year felt markedly different.