Happy 250th birthday, America! The Reflecting Pool is green, the country just agreed to pay $300 billion for losing a war, and Karpf and Loge are here to make sense of who's cashing in on our broken politics. They also dig into the clipping economy around the World Cup, and how much of our cross‑cultural joy is real.

Links:

• What Color is the Reflecting Pool? An Investigation | The Atlantic
• 6 people arrested in connection with alleged vandalism of the Reflecting Pool, Trump says | NBC News
• Our hero the buffoon: Contradictory and concurrent Burkean framing of Arizona governor Evan Mecham | Western Journal of Communication