Freddy and Tocquevillian Hope

We made it to 250! Some people didn’t even think we would make it this long. Happy 4th of July!

I have seen America 250 merchandise and banners all over this year. American patriotism was not so cool a decade ago, and it’s interesting to see the displays back in.

An example of the “USA Merch” seen all over this year. This was near Chattanooga, TN (which is the city the Spanish national team picked for their World Cup training base).

Something that has been fun this year was watching the 2026 Winter Olympics and the ongoing World Cup hosted here (Remember we went around the moon? People are just watching soccer now). People have told me how much fun they had either witnessing or hearing about Scottish World Cup fans partying in Boston. Fun is back, at least in one sense.

Americans enjoy winning. Getting knocked out of the World Cup early would have been disappointing. But most Americans don’t care if we completely win the World Cup. In fact, fun mode is highest if we get to watch someone else enjoy a victory. A nontrivial percent of Americans were genuinely rooting for Cape Verde.

For EconLog, I wrote a piece about Freddy the German World Cup tourist.

Freddy the World Cup Tourist and Tocqueville’s Hopes for America

At the link, I present Freddy and his Twitter/X posts as evidence that some of Tocqueville’s highest hopes have been fulfilled, so far.

If you go looking for Freddy, as of when I checked on July 3, he has deactivated his X account. With nearly a million followers he probably could have become a paid influencer, but he does not want to. I suppose he wants to return to Germany and live a more stable life. He never expected to get this much attention.