However, there’s no question the anniversary lands at an uncertain time for America, with deep political division at home and – polls show – wide unpopularity abroad.
The US leader still struggles to shut the door on the country’s latest Middle East war, has a 37% approval and 62% disapproval rating in the most recent CNN poll of polls and faces a consequential Midterm election with Republican control of Congress under threat.
President Donald Trump, the Showman in Chief, also has a Great American State Fair this week.
But patriotic uplift is battling against a background of apprehension about the present and future after an extreme, norm-busting, year-and-a-half in Trump’s second term.
Operating with a pliant Congress, controlled by his party, Trump has put US government, judiciary, institutions and alliances through a stress test, aggressively exerting his personal influence politically, economically and militarily, in ways that have damaged America’s traditional leadership.
Other countries seek to survive this period, hedging, diversifying and strategising, trying to be less reliant on and exposed to Trump’s America.
But the list of setbacks for the Trump Administration has grown through court rulings, US public resentment at inflation and cost of living pressures, and the disastrous and expensive war on Iran.
The war exposed limitations of US planning, strategy, diplomacy and reliance on high-tech weaponry while having wide and some unintended consequences. Iran has emerged with greater resources and closer ties with China and its immediate neighbours, while Russia’s ‘win’ in having restrictions lifted on its oil is turning to ashes as Ukraine strikes its refineries.
For Americans, as for people elsewhere, there’s background social concerns about the changing climate, the impact of tech and social media on our brains and behaviour, and what the massive investment in AI means for jobs.
The US has the added problem of democratic erosion with Trump constantly stretching the boundaries of his power while making everything about himself – even the World Cup’s rules. He constantly undercuts his country’s claims to be a moral leader.
It’s still probable that America’s subdued political appeal to the outside world is recoverable under different leadership in a post-Trump era.
The ultimate irony is that 250 years after kicking out rule under a British monarch, it has elected someone who acts as if they were king.