When I was about 10 years old, my parents had a small black and white TV on a cart in their master bedroom. We had gotten our first color set, which was downstairs in the family room. Decades ago, TVs were under strict parental control, regardless of location. TV was turned on only with permission, and we watched what we were allowed to watch.

I don’t know how it happened, or what exactly I was doing, but I just outside the doorway of my parents’ bedroom, I dimly recall having some paper and crayons or tape, and I was seated on the floor. Whatever I was doing, I was so absorbed in it I didn’t notice the little black and white TV was on in their room. I was not paying any attention at all, until suddenly my father appeared, and started shouting at me, which was shocking, words like: “have you sunk to a new low? What would possess you to watch this?! What kind a person watches this?!” He said something like he was ashamed of me, watching this.

He was furious, and I was bewildered, and I started to say that I wasn’t watching it, but he wasn’t having it. A quick glance at the TV before Dad snapped it off showed it was a boxing match. I tried again to plead I was not watching it, but was cut off. It occurred to me years later that I was sitting outside their bedroom door, when in our large house was not necessary – plenty of other places to sit. It might have looked like I was perched there intentionally.

Dad also was the strict one about the TV, and I think rightly so. He was very involved in every aspect of the formation of his children. He was not prone to shouting at us, either – when he had a serious point to get across, it was usually in a terse or stern tone. So this was a rare event. But it all came back to me when I first heard about the UFC fight scheduled to be held on the White House lawn. At first. I thought, “no way”, but it is upon us. This is after the East Wing of the White House was torn down, Donald Trump has renamed a whole bunch of national treasures in his own honor, and don’t get me started on everything else.

World Cup soccer is being held in the US for the first time in over 30 years. Ultimate Fighting is still very much a niche ‘sport’. Still. It worse than boxing. It’s a cage fight.

What kind of person watches this?

We are about to mark the 250th anniversary of the founding of our country. I have been blessed to be alive and a teenager during the bicentennial. Marking the 200th anniversary of our country also came at a difficult time, to name just a few of the crises – we were two years after Watergate, after a long bloody slog in Southeast Asia that cost American lives, Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese communists in 1975, we had an energy crisis, out-of-control inflation, civil rights struggles, cities like New York nearly went bankrupt. And yet – the bicentennial was something that united us, despite all that. It was an important reminder to me, as I reflected on what was happening in 1976.

There was a bipartisan committee set up by Congress to organize the festivities, called America250. It is still the official body to organize all activities related to the 250th.

The Trump Administration has set up a competing initiative called “Freedom 250”, which has been accused of diverting funds to events like the UFC fight on the White House lawn, and using the Freedom250 initiative as cover for political donations.

Like the long-ago girl who was chastised, I feel like I am suffering consequences for something I didn’t do. I didn’t vote for Donald Trump. Like so many people, we feel helpless and angry and like no one is standing up for us. Our founders devised a very durable structure, with the three branches of government and separation of powers, they could foresee what would happen when you had a person like Donald Trump in the White House. If we actually follow the processes set forth in our Constitution and laws, it has proven to work well. But when people feel helpless, and angry, and they lose faith in the process and the institutions, where do we go?

There was a special edition of “Washington Week with the Atlantic” to discuss America at 250 on Friday, June 12th on PBS. Well worth watching. It had a wonderful panel of people talking about the state of the country. As inasmuch as it was sobering, it was also comforting that we are able to have these kinds of discussions. One of the panelists mentioned this:

“I was reading de Tocqueville’s take on America, and he actually has this, I think, remarkable quote. He says, what makes America special — I’m paraphrasing, this isn’t exactly what he said, but what makes America special is not that it’s more enlightened than other countries, but that it has the capacity to repair itself. And I think that’s the story of our 250 years, is our effort to try to repair ourselves and get to a better place.”

Let’s take the long view. We can repair ourselves and get to a better place.