From corporate‑branded block parties to millionaires demanding higher taxes, patriotism has become the richest Americans’ favourite accessory… and their sharpest alibi.
Fireworks, flags, limited-edition merch, corporate pledges, military flyovers, and plenty of red, white and blue… after all that noise, America’s 250th birthday is officially over.
And beneath the pageantry, the 4th of July is not just a date where the country simply celebrates itself. Instead, on it’s 250th anniversary, it’s arguing over who gets to define what (if anything) loving America is supposed to look like, because patriotism changes meaning depending on who is using it.
Right now, Americans are talking about patriotism in two totally different ways. One camp shows its love of country with sponsorship deals and glossy heritage projects: their logos sit on America250 fireworks, their brands front “volunteer” campaigns, and the underlying message is that the economic system that made them rich is what makes America great. The other camp — the Patriotic Millionaires crowd — insists that love of country should be measured in how much you’re prepared to give up: higher taxes on fortunes like theirs, tighter rules on money in politics, and a willingness to help fix the very system that made them rich in the first place.
Both claim to speak for the nation, and yet neither quite resembles the way most Americans are feeling this year.
Patriotism at low tide
In 2026, patriotism itself is fraying.
A major Independence Day poll this year found that while 68% of Americans still say they are proud to be American, only 31% believe the country is “on the right track,” an unusually wide gap between emotional attachment and confidence in the country’s direction. Other surveys report that the share of people who describe themselves as “extremely proud” has dropped sharply since the mid‑2010s, tying or hitting record lows in the lead‑up to the semiquincentennial.
Unsurprisingly, the decline is not evenly distributed politically.
Republicans are far more likely than Democrats to report strong patriotic feeling, and older Americans significantly more likely than younger adults. One analysis notes that “extreme pride” is now concentrated among older, conservative respondents, while younger and liberal Americans increasingly describe patriotism with ambivalence, distance or discomfort.
This sets a peculiar scene to celebrate America’s 250th birthday.
The class puzzle: who loves America?
It’s not just age or political inclinations that have anything to do with just how much you adore America, but class plays a surprisingly big role in it too.
Sociologist Francesco Duina’s work on Poverty and Patriotism in America finds that poor Americans report some of the highest levels of patriotic attachment in the country — higher, in many cases, than wealthier and college‑educated Americans. A review of his book Broke and Patriotic notes that between 80 and 90 percent of Americans at the bottom of the income ladder say they are proud of their country, and many insist the United States is simply “better” than other nations, even as their own prospects remain bleak.
These figures prove the cliché that “wealth buys comfort, and comfort buys loyalty” doesn’t really hold. In fact, Duina’s work suggests that those with the least economic security can be among the most emotionally invested in the nation itself. Part of the reason, perhaps, is that patriotism gives people something money doesn’t always provide: dignity, belonging, and the feeling of having inherited a little piece of greatness. For wealthier Americans, status can come from the usual glossy places — good schools, passport stamps, taste, job titles, the ability to be elegantly unimpressed by everything. But for poorer Americans, national pride can offer its own kind of lift. To believe America is exceptional is not just to admire the country from a distance; it is to feel, however faintly, included in the exception.
Among the rich, patriotism shows up as strategy — expressed in sponsorships, branding and carefully worded op‑eds about what the country needs next. It is not usually the sweaty, tearful, hand-on-heart variety.
Two languages of affluent patriotism
Within affluent America, there are now two clearly articulated ways of talking about patriotism.
On one side is the camp represented by Patriotic Millionaires, a network of high‑net‑worth Americans who argue that “making money doesn’t make you a patriot.” The group’s chair, former BlackRock managing director Morris Pearl, has attacked efforts to roll back enforcement against wealthy tax cheats as a betrayal of democratic foundations, arguing that patriotism requires holding the rich to at least the same standard as everyone else.
They view patriotism as accountability: a willingness to accept restraint and redistribution as the cost of having benefited so heavily from American institutions.
On the other side sits a more traditional elite narrative in which wealth creation itself is framed as patriotic, and a continuation of ‘The American Dream’. In this view, building companies, investing capital and defending low taxes are acts of loyalty because they keep the economy competitive and fuel innovation. Calls for higher taxes on the rich are cast as an attack on the productive engine of the nation; corporate success and shareholder returns are treated as evidence that the country is flourishing. Here, patriotism becomes a story about preserving the conditions under which the wealthy prospered in the first place.
The stage: America250 and the corporate flag
To see this split clearly, don’t look at what people say. Look at where they show up.
The official semiquincentennial organisation, America250, was created by Congress to plan and fund the 250th anniversary celebrations, promising the “biggest and most spectacular commemoration in the nation’s history.” On paper, it was a bipartisan effort to educate and “engage 350 million Americans”through block parties, concerts, educational programs and service initiatives.
In practice, it was also a load of corporate patriotism.
America250’s sponsor list is pretty much what you’d expect: airlines, banks, tech giants, retailers, defence contractors and the usual corporate giants of American life. Coca-Cola, Amazon, Walmart, JPMorgan, Lockheed Martin, Oracle, Palantir — everyone gets a flag. It’s a useful reminder that, in America, patriotism is never just a feeling. It is also, very often, a partnership opportunity.
These sponsors are providing cash, logistics, themed aircraft liveries, marketing campaigns and service hours in exchange for formal association with the national milestone. Chick‑fil‑A, for example, has attached itself to America250 through a volunteer program called America Gives, committing restaurants and staff to log service hours throughout 2026 under a patriotic brand umbrella.
Patriotism as alibi and accountability
By this point, you probably have understood that patriotism, is not a simple feeling, but a very convenient justification.
For the brand‑heavy, corporate version, patriotism functions as an alibi: a way to present profit‑seeking behaviour as public‑spirited. Americans for Tax Fairness has pointed out that the 100 largest US firms reported more than a trillion dollars in profits last year while shedding tens of thousands of jobs and paying relatively low effective tax rates, even as they wrap themselves in patriotic campaigns around Independence Day. Sponsoring America250, launching red‑white‑and‑blue marketing and promoting service hours allows these firms to appear as benefactors of the nation, rather than beneficiaries of a system that favours them.
For the Patriotic Millionaires and similar voices, patriotism acts instead as a form of accountability. They frame their wealth as made possible by the US system and therefore as carrying a duty to repair its injustices, not simply celebrate its successes. Patriotism, in their eyes, is being held accountable for their success.
Who is the patriotism for?
So who is all this elite patriotism actually for?
On paper, America250 says it’s for “all Americans.” In practice, most of the energy is aimed upwards and sideways, not down. The sponsor decks, VIP tents and branded service campaigns are built to impress other powerful people — lawmakers, senior officials, donors, corporate boards, trade associations. They’re also designed to reassure the state that big companies and wealthy patrons are loyal partners.
Ordinary citizens are not excluded from the celebrations of course. They get the fireworks, the concerts, the flags, the merch, the swelling music, the brief pleasure of feeling part of something larger. But their share of the occasion is mostly atmospheric. It begins and ends as a day in the year. An experience. What they do not get is the afterlife of patriotism, with the access, the donor relationships, the corporate goodwill, the political proximity, the reputational lift.
That’s why groups like the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund keep stressing that America250 is “brought to you by” a corporate roll‑call and calling the official programming “ancestor‑worshiping propaganda” — they see a celebration that talks to the nation while mostly performing for its wealthiest institutions.
After the party: who owns the country?
Polls around America’s 250th say most people still feel proud to be American, but far fewer believe the country is headed in the right direction.
America’s 250th is both a mirror and a stage: the flags on porches and the flags on sponsorship decks are not telling quite the same story.
