MS NOW Anchor Feels ‘Deep Unease’ Over Celebrating America’s 250th Birthday

This editor still remembers the Bicentennial very well. It was a big deal. The nation's semiquincentennial should be just as patriotic, but as The New Yorker informed us over the weekend, patriotism just isn't cool anymore. The simple fact that America's 250th birthday is taking place while President Donald Trump sits in the Oval Office has people planning "alternative" celebrations, e.g., No Kings protests, which is the most ironic thing you could do on the anniversary of the nation's independence.

Mediaite reports that MS NOW's Ali Velshi feels a "deep unease" about celebrating the semiquincentennial.

MS NOW Anchor Feels 'Deep Unease' About Celebrating America's 250th Birthday: US Has Never 'Fully Reckoned With Its Racist Past' https://t.co/fLlPuB4Cm0
— Mediaite (@Mediaite) May 31, 2026

Sean James reports:

MS NOW anchor Ali Velshi told his viewers on Sunday he feels a “deep unease” about celebrating the USA’s 250th birthday — in large part due to the country’s “unresolved racial politics.” He also slammed America as a “so-called democracy” during a rant on his program.
“Anniversaries are imperfect records of the thing which is being celebrated. In America’s case, anniversaries often gloss over the racial dynamics underlying much of America’s history and politics, issues that remain unsolved, because America has never actually fully reckoned with its racist past and its original founding sin of slavery,” Velshi said.
He continued, “In one month, America will mark the 250th anniversary of its founding. Like previous anniversaries, there is a deep unease about this. I feel a deep unease about the celebrations to which I am invited to mark the 250th anniversary of our so-called democracy.”

This editor has a theory that liberals like Mara Gay find dozens of American flags "disturbing" because liberals don't think that they can associate with anything that's not perfect. Ali Velshi uses the typical example of slavery. Slavery makes America imperfect, and so liberals think they have to distance themselves from it. They can't feel pride. They believe that the stripping away of critical race theory from schools means that slavery isn't going to be taught anymore because it makes white students feel uncomfortable.