“What is happening today in America is part of a global political turn — and what’s odd is how little the American people seem to realize it.” — Madeleine Schwartz
So we’ve finally arrived. America is 250 today. But where, exactly, have we come? How should we think about the United States of America on July 4, 2026?
Rather than peering inwards, Madeleine Schwartz — the Paris-based founder and editor-in-chief of The Dial — reverses the lens. The Dial’s anthology, How We See It: The World Looks at America in the Age of Trump, gathers twelve essays from writers in India, Canada, South Africa, Ukraine, Palestine, Taiwan, Turkey, Cuba, Egypt, Argentina, Italy, and Ireland. The result might be the most honest birthday message that America will receive today.
What these writers all observe is the same extraordinary ambivalence about the United States. They describe a country that defines itself as the democratic purveyor of justice, while operating as a vast imperial and economic power that shapes the lives of the rest of the world. What’s odd — and Schwartz uses that word carefully — is how few Americans seem to realise this is how the world sees them.
“The question of America is vast. It is unrelenting and unanswerable and will not be silenced,” the Gaza poet Muhammad al-Zaqzouq notes in his essay. Happy birthday, odd America. You might not know it, but the rest of the world is watching. And they won’t forget what they’ve seen.
