The Great American State Fair had pledged a tribute to liberty, yet I found myself suspended among the clouds.
There’s a moment in National Lampoon’s European Vacation where Clark Griswold guides his family through a familiar sightseeing loop as he struggles to exit a London roundabout. “Hey look, kids, there’s Big Ben, and there’s Parliament!” he says. “Again.”
I did not recognize this cultural touchstone until yesterday, when someone jammed into the overheated cabin with me and reminded me we were living it. Only our iteration felt distinctly American. Instead of the massive clock tower, we had the Washington Monument. Instead of Parliament, the Capitol stood in its place. And, most crucially, instead of a car with the driver’s seat on the right, we were riders on the longest Ferris wheel ride of my life.
That, in essence, was my introduction to The Great American State Fair, the exposition set up on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., to mark America’s 250th birthday. After I threaded my way through the queue and squeezed into a capsule with four others, we hung in suspense. It wasn’t until several minutes later, when we began turning with a bit of speed, that I realized the ride hadn’t truly started until that moment. (Or had it?) Around we went. There was motion, there was pausing, and there was wind rocking us—classic Ferris wheel rhythms. And during one of those pauses—by which point my face had reddened into a ripe cherry tomato—I began to wonder if the ride would ever end.
In the car sat a handful of locals alongside a charming Montana woman who quipped that we were getting real bang for the taxpayer buck with our perpetual ascent. It’s a fair point, especially when you’re roughly two thousand miles west. A mustachioed man diagonally across from me noted we had spent more time dangling in the air than waiting in line, and I snapped numerous photos of him and his apparent girlfriend, because, well, we had the time. There was a playful yet slightly anxious reluctance toward anti-MAGA sentiment, as if the spirit of President Donald J. Trump might drift by and give our gondola a push toward the pavilion below.
“I’m very MAGA,” the fourth passenger announced during one descent. She pressed her face against the glass, leaning toward the exit as if longing for the candy shop on the other side. “Sir,” she asked, “could you please let us off?” In that moment, she became the heroine of our tale. The attendant smiled and gestured upward. So we rose again.
In hindsight, the signs were everywhere: “Freedom 250” stamped on each car, nodding to the group the Trump administration formed to rival America250—the long-running, bipartisan effort to commemorate the Founding. Freedom was omnipresent, really: red, white, blue, gold, stars, flags, and people strolling about nibbling turkey legs beneath us. Freedom, freedom, freedom. So why was I trapped in this aerial dew drop?
Perhaps the upside is that Ferris wheels invite contemplation. What else is there to do while suspended delicately in a capsule, surveying the view? And here, on this particular ride, we were teased with some of the nation’s most iconic symbols of liberty while we could not seize them for ourselves. Nothing makes you appreciate your freedom more than losing it. That made me wonder, in a Carrie Bradshaw moment, whether the whole thing was a PsyOp designed to coax us into savoring the autonomy that makes America exceptional. I think it worked.
The view was striking also for what stood apart from the ordinary. To my left, the grass spread out in a lush, nearly empty carpet that stretched toward the Washington Monument, bordered by booths representing the states choosing to participate amid the acrimonious planning. To my right, a modest rodeo featured, among others, a woman clad in a tight, glittering pink bodysuit. Stalls offered refreshments like water bottles and sugary strawberry lemonades—roughly $5 and $10, respectively—and an enclosure where the World Cup played on. And that was essentially the sum of it. The Great American State Fair felt contradictory by design, yet it was a contradiction worth welcoming: a nationwide fair that, at least in theory, might outpace the classic state fairs by embracing bigger, more carnival-like theatrics. Who doesn’t adore a fair? Still, there’s a strong pull toward the charm found in a small-town carnival.
It’s also a missed opportunity. Counterintuitively, that appears in the very ride that turned me into a Ferris-wheel hamster.
It’s not common to cram a bunch of strangers into a capsule and send them soaring heavenward: to contemplate, to bake in the sun, to wonder aloud when you’ll be allowed to dismount. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has faced criticism for filming a reality program—The Great American Road Trip—while serving as a government employee. It’s a bit odd, I’ll admit. Perhaps a better plan would have been to assemble ideologically diverse groups for those Great American Ferris Wheel cars and let them hash it out for about forty minutes. That’s roughly how long my ride lasted, though I felt I had aged a lot more by the time I stepped onto solid ground and kissed the pavement. Maybe someone would meet a nice Montana woman who would reveal that, allegedly, it can snow there in June. I would watch that.
I might even ride it again. In National Lampoon’s European Vacation, Griswold’s predicament persisted largely because he was a clown. In London, the exit was there for the taking. But this is America. We opt to do the hard thing. “I’m so sorry,” a friend texted after I admitted my new address was a Ferris wheel, “but this is really funny.” I can’t argue with that.
