By now it’s clear Donald Trump has ruined America’s semiquincentennial. From the corporate cage fight on the White House lawn to the unloved American State Fair on the Mall and the soldiers keeping people from contemplating the algae-choked allegory of corruption and incompetence that is the Reflecting Pool, Trump and his allies have made our country’s 250th an occasion for national embarrassment.

But things aren’t much better at the bipartisan, congressionally sponsored 250th commission, a body that was created in 2016 to oversee this year’s commemorations, but which had much of its funding diverted to a newer, Trump-controlled rival, Freedom 250. America250, as the official Semiquincentennial Commission is known, has Democratic members, including Senators Alex Padilla of California and New Hampshire’s Jeanne Shaheen, and is chaired by Biden appointee Rosie Rios, former U.S. Treasurer, but it’s not doing the country proud either. 

Case in point: the most important thing America250 can do is to help Americans contemplate the meaning of the country’s first quarter-millennium. Where did the U.S. come from and why was it created? What does it stand for, who belongs, and where are we going? The closest thing you find to an answer at their websites is the sixteen-volume “America250 Celebration Comics Pack” — $69.99 at the online store — licensed by the commission to inspire conversation around these big existential questions. It’s a pretty good idea on the face of it. Comics can be a great way to bring history alive, as the medium packs a huge amount of visual and textual information in an easily accessible, storytelling form. But the America250 Comics Pack, like the displays on Trump’s “Freedom Trucks,” has a single-minded and deeply polarizing agenda.

The comics — beautifully executed and bearing the America250 logo — were produced by Kingstone, a Christian publisher best known for its 2000-page, 10,000 panel graphic interpretation of the Bible. The overarching message is that America was founded under the auspices of the Christian God and built by those faithful to him with frequent miraculous assists from on high. We’re a Christian country, it argues on nearly every page, that only exists because the Lord wished it to. Anything in our history that complicates that story has simply been omitted. It’s a cherry-picking expedition par excellence conducted under the auspices of a federal government that’s supposed to stand apart from religion.

The series — drawn by a world-class Brazilian artist who lost his gig with Marvel comics over antisemitic imagery in cartoons championing........

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