'Awesome.' 'Sad.' 'Let's keep democracy going.' Americans weigh in on state of a 250-year-old nation

Across the United States, many Americans are celebrating their country's 250th birthday by closing their ears to all the partisan shouting. All the fingernails-on-chalkboard screeching out of Washington. All the clamor of social media agitprop.

Instead, in varied ways, they are tuning into their own personal concepts of America the Beautiful.In Associated Press interviews with citizens in the days before the Fourth, auto technician Joe Fuqua-Bejarano, in Topeka, Kansas, sized up “what makes us awesome” as a people. It's clearly not the politics, in his view, but rather resilience.

“We’ve just all got to find unity somewhere, whether that’s in laughter or perseverance, and keep everybody cool,” he said from the fireworks stand where he's doing a booming business as a side hustle.The world's long-running image of Americans as a brash and confident (if not boastful and jingoistic) lot did not square easily with the tempered enthusiasms and trepidations expressed by many of the people AP interviewed.“There are lots of points of contention going around,” noted one of them, Christina Zhou, a 25-year-old research assistant from Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Yet “there are still a lot of beautiful things that are happening.”“What I’m trying to do is think about just things that are happening locally,” she added. “It feels a little bit more like within our own personal control.”

‘We’re just happy Americans' In Mont Vernon, New Hampshire, farmer Mindy Dean, 50, and her family will be milking their goats Saturday and maybe taking in some local fireworks. Or maybe not. The 250th hoopla has been mostly lost on her.

“We’re just happy Americans,” she said. “We kinda do our own thing and just enjoy our freedom as Americans.”In contrast, the goat-free Neil Casey, an 81-year-old retiree from Nashua, New Hampshire, and his friend Maureen Regan, who lives in Cambridge, are free-range celebrants.

They're roaming Boston's historical sites, like Paul Revere's house, and as many of the city's Fourth events as they can manage. They, too, are plugging their ears to discord.“I’m very much aware of our country and what we’ve been through, you know, so I’m just trying to immerse myself in the atmosphere of the 250th," Casey said.

Regan took heart in all the soccer fans who poured into the country for the World Cup and praised what they experienced. “They love everything we have," she said, ”and I want people to not forget that and remember how lucky we are." Her advice to compatriots: "Just enjoy the moment.

Enjoy that we’ve been here for 250 years.”Still, for some, it is nearly impossible to separate holiday patriotism from steps by President Donald Trump to bend the celebrations toward himself, as with the Fourth of July festivities on the National Mall that he said will culminate in a Trump rally Saturday. When patriotism feels ‘Republican’ "When you’re celebrating the Fourth of July right now, it feels like that’s like a Republican thing to do,” said Madeline Capodilupo, 26, a special-education teacher who lives in Boston.

She'll spend the weekend with her fiancé's family at their Maine beach house.“It’s just hard to celebrate something when it doesn’t feel like we should be celebrating anything," she said.What celebrants are celebrating, exactly, is diverse and personal.

Ronald Hall spent 18 months in the Air Force toward the end of the Vietnam War. His wife, Karen, served two years in the Army and took part in Operation Desert Storm during the first Gulf War. While they shopped for vegetables at Detroit's Eastern Market this week, Ronald said he's spent a lifetime celebrating American ideals, which might be distinct from reality.

As a Black man, he said, America's promise of freedom and equality was at the core. “I grew up remembering the promise,” he said. “That’s what we celebrated: the promise, not the country.”

Old warriors find their faith tested Veterans are always front and center in America's big occasions and the 250th is no different. At the New Hampshire Veterans Home in Tilton, residents are looking forward to a community celebration in the coming days that will feature a National Guard Black Hawk helicopter, a World War II ambulance, food trucks, music and even Uncle Sam on stilts. The old warriors are keeping the faith.

But that faith is being tested.“I believe this country is the greatest that ever existed,” said Leo LeClerc, 83, an Air Force veteran who served in Vietnam. “Our democracy is strong and it will continue to be strong as long as people participate in it.”

But, he said. “I don’t like what’s going on in this country" and “I don’t feel very good about the 250th.” An independent who voted for Trump in 2016, he now believes a “cult of personality has taken over" around the president.

Tom Gaumont, 74, an Army veteran and former history teacher, remembered the 1976 bicentennial as a more hopeful time, despite the aftershocks of President Richard Nixon's resignation under threat of impeachment.“I’m kinda sad at this po