The Fire Next Time
Power is ever-changing. It can be given. It can be taken away. It can be redirected. Just like archives.
Words By Brea Baker
The America 250 celebrations are all monuments to memory. As we know, what we choose to remember, as well as what we omit, is an inherently subjective and political process. People and institutions like the Trump administration and white supremacists across America intended to weaponize the July 4th weekend as a propaganda machine. Conveniently propping up white men, erasing all others, and doing it on the largest stage imaginable was what they envisioned. But nature had other plans.
First came the heat. For days leading up to the 4th, temperatures climbed in the DMV. By Friday, the heat index was expected to reach 112 degrees Fahrenheit. With their hands tied behind their backs, the National Park Service cancelled the following day’s parade. Trump’s Great American State Fair had already been going for a week but was marred by low attendance and moody weather patterns. The 4th was supposed to be Trump’s crowning moment; a spectacle second-to-none. Rather than heeding the warnings as other agencies had, the state fair continued on as planned.
So-called “patriots” assembled to celebrate the “Founding Fathers” grew weak and ill from the extreme heat beaming down on the Fair. Temperatures continued to climb, and hundreds of people were shuttled from the National Mall to George Washington University Hospital. Still, many stayed, desperate to boost attendance rates and hear from Trump himself.
Not long before Trump was scheduled to take the stage, ominous storm clouds rolled in so fiercely that there was barely time to safely evacuate the National Mall. As the piercing heat gave way to cracking thunder and a deluge of rain, people rushed into the nearest places with an open door. Many of those assembled – conservatives, racists, and apologists – ended up in the lobby of the NMAAHC, lovingly called the Black Smithsonian.
I’m not a particularly superstitious person, but I don’t believe in coincidences. In the same way that Dr. King spoke of a long moral arc that bends toward justice, I believe that something bigger than us is conspiring with us. I believe that nature is dynamic and alive and an accomplice in our fight for a new human story. Maybe this is a placebo pill offering hope with no strings attached. Or maybe our ancestors played a role in disrupting those celebrations in their tracks.
The words from an old African-American spiritual, reproduced in James Baldwin’s seminal nonfiction work, come to mind:
“God gave Noah the rainbow sign, No more water, the fire next time!”
The weekend began with scorching heat, followed by heavy rain that pushed Trump’s speech back until it was almost midnight. Right before the clock struck twelve, Trump took the stage, followed by a fireworks show that didn’t quite make up for the otherwise dampened festivities. “We will always be on top,” Trump said, and he sounded like he was trying to convince himself more than anyone.
The irony of Trump’s Fair and other recent vanity projects – like tearing up the Rose garden, Midas-touching the Oval Office, and campaigning for a grandiose ballroom – is that his monuments to memory are now plagued by new shadows. As much as he incessantly harkens back to a greater America, Trump can’t seem to inch us any closer to it. He can’t even celebrate the past right. That is the story that will be told of 2026 and of this second term. A lackluster celebration marred by shifty weather and planned by a President with record-low ratings.
There is something oh so sweet about this. That, for all their planning and spending, it was heat and rain that did them in. For a group of men hell-bent on exerting their dominance, this was something beyond their control. The dominators were bested, proving that power is ever-changing. It can be given. It can be taken away. It can be redirected. Just like archives. We can always shift the narrative, reclaim our collective memory, and demand to be the architects of the stories to come.
When those sitting behind ivory walls think they have us backed into a corner, that’s when we remind them that we burn with the intensity of infinite embers. We are the fire that time, this time, and next time.