{"id":75736,"date":"2026-07-04T12:55:17","date_gmt":"2026-07-04T17:55:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/2026\/07\/04\/the-us-celebrated-the-end-of-a-long-national-nightmare-as-it-turned-200-what-about-now\/"},"modified":"2026-07-04T12:55:17","modified_gmt":"2026-07-04T17:55:17","slug":"the-us-celebrated-the-end-of-a-long-national-nightmare-as-it-turned-200-what-about-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/2026\/07\/04\/the-us-celebrated-the-end-of-a-long-national-nightmare-as-it-turned-200-what-about-now\/","title":{"rendered":"The US celebrated the end of a \u2018long national nightmare\u2019 as it turned 200. What about now?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A decade in the making, the 1976 bicentennial had a cathartic impact on the wounded national polity<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/2026\/jun\/25\/future-of-america-after-250-years-tell-us\">Americans: how do you feel about the country\u2019s future after 250 years of independence?<\/a><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>It felt like a proper jamboree \u2013 a coming together of diverse peoples who thought they had something to celebrate. But the defining moment of the 1976 bicentennial, the US\u2019s last epic birthday celebration, came two years before.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over,\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=LySpUpI9k1s&amp;t=1s\">Gerald Ford declared<\/a> in his presidential inauguration speech of 9 August 1974. \u201cOur great republic is a government of laws and not of men.\u201d<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/2026\/jul\/04\/us-independence-day-holidays-past\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A decade in the making, the 1976 bicentennial had a cathartic impact on the wounded national polity Americans: how do you feel about the country\u2019s future after 250 years of independence? It felt like a proper jamboree \u2013 a coming together of diverse peoples who thought they had something to celebrate. But the defining moment &#8230; <a title=\"The US celebrated the end of a \u2018long national nightmare\u2019 as it turned 200. What about now?\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/2026\/07\/04\/the-us-celebrated-the-end-of-a-long-national-nightmare-as-it-turned-200-what-about-now\/\" aria-label=\"Read more about The US celebrated the end of a \u2018long national nightmare\u2019 as it turned 200. What about now?\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-75736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75736"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75736\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}