Like many Americans, I have already begun looking forward to our semiquincentennial next year. Is that, in fact, le mot juste? I ask because I’ve come across occasional references to the forthcoming “sestercentennial,” the “sesquicentenary,” the “quarter-millennial,” and, on one occasion, the absurd but pleasing “dhaicentennial,” a proposed neologism taken from the Hindi word for “two and a half,” which has the distinct advantage of rhyming with “bicentennial.”

In any case—250 years of this? (You have to imagine me wearing aviator sunglasses behind the wheel of a parked 1995 Silverado, cranking up “Dallas Blues” with one hand while holding a Coors Banquet in the other, with Olivia de Havilland sitting on my lap heating a Marlboro Red 100 while the ghosts of Davy Crockett, Sitting Bull, and Jim Brown beam down at us.) In the year to come, you can expect any number of what I’m sure will be closely argued, analytically focused pieces about the “meaning” of America—how far we’ve come, how it’s going, where we’re headed, etc. I prefer to remind people that, whatever our shortcomings, we’ve given the world baseball, Hollywood, jazz, football, and rock and roll. Your mileage may vary with one or more of these achievements, but it’s worth pointing out that we managed all of them in roughly the same span in which Gladstone served as a Member of Parliament.

As if there weren’t already enough to feel smug about heading into 2026, we now have an American pope. More than anything else in our history—defeating the Third Reich, going to the moon, winning the Cold War—this suggests to me that these United States have finally arrived on the world stage. It doesn’t even matter if we never have another U.S.-born pontiff. Pope Leo’s hometown Bears have only one Super Bowl, but everything about them still screams “classic football.”

Speaking of American history, I recently admitted that I had never read Democracy in America. I say “admitted”; “proudly declared my ignorance” would be more appropriate. At the risk of losing whatever credibility I have with my editors, I should also confess that I’ve never read Bowling Alone, Silent Spring, The Lonely Crowd, or anything by Fr. John Courtney Murray. (Did he write The Second Sex?) In my defense, I pointed out that Tocqueville was working in what was once a recognizable and even shopworn genre—the British, or in his case continental, dispatch from America. Charles Dickens wrote one of these books. So did Harriet Martineau, the social theorist, who hated our periodicals: “It is hard to tell which is worst—the wide diffusion of things that are not true, or the suppression of things that are true.” Probably the funniest of the lot is Domestic Manners of the Americans, by Frances Trollope, mother of the novelist. Mrs. Trollope loathed slavery and our hotels and thought we chewed too much tobacco. Having read and enjoyed all of these books does me very little good, I’m afraid—it’s like saying you’re a big fan of Martin Scorsese, especially his masterpieces New York, New York and Kundun, or confessing that you are a lifelong Mr. Pibb enthusiast who has never tried Coca-Cola.

On the subject of Mr. Pibb, I have always wondered why Dr. Pepper’s chief rival is not a fellow medical man, surely a reassuring point in his favor where parents are concerned. Or at any rate were. Most of the marquee snack foods from my childhood are becoming things of the past. My kids, for instance, have never eaten Hostess products, and it seems unlikely that they ever will. If Twinkies, HoHos, Ding Dongs do go the way of snus or cockfighting, they will be in good company; with the almost complete disappearance of literacy on the horizon, there will be no equivalent of the helpful notes that once initiated readers of Tom Sawyer into the vanished world of 19th-century boys’ games. In the Year of Our Lord 2076, no 8-year-old will ever wonder what a Gusher was.

As I write this, the Detroit Tigers are on pace for their best season since Jim Leyland’s retirement. Since I refuse to take out a subscription with the gambling conglomerate that now controls the team’s television rights, I’m stuck listening to them on the radio. This means I am spared the recitation of meaningless statistics beloved only of bored D-list cable announcers—“Spencer Torkelson has the most RBIs among active hitters drafted in the first round and born in Sonoma County, California, during Bill Clinton’s second term,” that sort of thing.

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Meaningless statistics—which are different from actively pernicious ones—are not just for sports. A study recently arrived in my inbox breathlessly declaring that Michigan is “the No. 15 best state for aging in place,” by which they seem to mean “living at home past the age of 50.” As an unabashed Michigan ultra, I found this amusing and had thought to send it to an uncle who now winters in Florida—until it occurred to me that I had no idea they were basing this on. From the press release:

Among the key findings, in Michigan 29.4% of people use smart home technology to interact with household equipment via the internet (tied for 9th), the largest cities have an Average Walk Score of 41 (tied for 10th), and there are 13.8 fatal car crashes involving older adults for every 100,000 drivers (tied for 13th).

I know that what Jerry Muller has called the “tyranny of metrics” is an acute issue these days, but one would think that even sociologists and PR types could find a better argument for the Wolverine State than dystopian Alexa, the continued existence of crosswalks, and the 13-lowest chance of rear-ending (or being rear-ended by?) a senior citizen.