American jingoism remains the ruling ideology of the United States, on the right as well as the left and centre. The upcoming 250th anniversary of independence, which the country will celebrate on 4 July 2026, is yet another occasion to express America's ultranationalism and rewrite the country's sordid history of oppression and genocide as a story of "freedom".

President Donald Trump, the hero of white supremacists and conservatives, has declared that "With a single sheet of parchment and 56 signatures, America began the greatest political journey in human history."

Former president Barack Obama, the best thing that ever happened to white American liberals, enthusiastically agrees: "Since we're a few weeks away from America's 250th birthday, it is worth remembering just how radical the whole idea of self-government really was back in 1776."

He adds that the Declaration of Independence asserted "that we are all created equal, endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights".

Obama then offers a mild reprimand for what seems to be an oversight on the part of the white slave-owning settlers who declared independence:

In forming our union, the founders fell terribly short of the Declaration's promise, leaving slavery intact, allowing states to restrict the franchise to white men who owned property, but in drafting a constitution and a bill of rights, they did have the foresight, the genius to provide us with a framework that allows each generation to make our union more perfect... And over more than two centuries... "We the people" came to include not just some of us, but all of us.

If a white South African claimed that the establishment in 1910 of the white supremacist settler-colonial Union of South Africa was the first step towards making South Africa, a century later, inclusive of non-white people, such a person would deservedly face ridicule and condemnation.