Donald Trump, Theodore Roosevelt, and the end of American imperium
One of the countless civic gatherings held to commemorate America’s 250th anniversary Saturday could be found at the Sagamore Hill National Historic Site in Cove Neck, New York, nestled on the old-monied North Shore of Long Island. Visitors were invited to tour a well-preserved replica of President Theodore Roosevelt’s stately “Summer White House,” from which he conducted government business circa 1902 to 1909; inside, many striking artifacts can be viewed, perhaps most prominently a set of enormous elephant tusks said to have been gifted to Roosevelt by Emperor Menelik of Abyssinia — the largest elephant tusks currently on public display anywhere in the Western Hemisphere, according to a park ranger.
Much of the historic site’s day-to-day upkeep is overseen by Friends of Sagamore Hill, a volunteer group consisting mostly of retirement-aged locals, one of whom, Treasurer Jay Perrell, was asked (by me) to reflect on the significance of “America 250.” While he said the milestone was “great,” he also lamented the conspicuous lack of anniversary-themed signage adorning the property — a result of what he said was a “political issue” he and his group encountered in the lead-up. They had ordered some generic 250th anniversary banners from Amazon.com, but were informed by the National Park Service superintendent responsible for Sagamore Hill that the signage was unacceptable. Perrell surmised that this was down to a political dispute between two rival commemorative factions, “America250” and “Freedom 250” — the latter having been created by the Trump Administration to orchestrate its own branded festivities, and the former stemming from a more anodyne bipartisan commission originally set up by Congress ten years ago. So, this small group of volunteer hobbyists were told the banners they had innocuously attempted to display were “not National Parks Service-certified” — and they couldn’t even get a clear answer as to what they were permitted to display. “We kept asking the superintendent,” Perrell said. “There’s no answer — they can’t make a determination.”
An email (by me) to NPS superintendent Jonathan Parker was not returned. And indeed, on the drive back and forth to the site, no “America 250” signage of any kind was visible, although some of the young children in attendance Saturday afternoon were happily wearing this year’s version of the classic “Old Navy” branded USA t-shirts, which did permissibly reference the 250th Anniversary, likely without the need for any direct federal approval.
Moving on from the strange bureaucratic mishap, Perrell was asked (by me) if he reckons that America as we know it will continue to exist in another 250 years. A woman sitting at a nearby picnic table, doing patriotic arts & crafts with a cheerful little girl, confidently interjected: “Oh, definitely.” I replied that denizens of the Roman Empire may have exuded similar confidence at an analogous juncture in the lifespan of their overarching political entity. “Well, Italy’s still there,” the woman said, as she continued twisting red-white-and-blue ribbons onto miniature objects. Drawing out the parallel a bit further, the woman was correct to observe that in 2026, there is a European landmass with a political entity situated upon it called “Italy” — though the modern Italian Republic is of course unrecognizable from the sprawling entity of which Rome was the seat of power during the lost days of Empire. Any surviving relics of imperial Rome are now museum pieces and tourist attractions.
It would likewise seem reasonable to suppose that in the great sweep of history, 250 years hence there could still exist a landmass commonly referred to as Long Island. But considerably less certain is that the political entity situated upon it will be exactly the same — whether that be the State of New York, or the United States of America. Especially for a federal entity so vast and outstretched as the present one, spanning as it does up to 8,000 miles west of Sagamore Hill, a whole fourteen timezones away in the Northern Mariana Islands — perhaps a locale more obscure to the average American than Long Island, but nonetheless ruled under the same umbrella of centralized political authority.
