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The most American thing I saw this July 4 was an Instagram shot of the Kennedy clan celebrating at the family estate somewhere in Massachusetts. There must have been about 40 or 50 of them, a multigenerational cast arranged in rows of chairs as neat as their teeth, on a freshly mown lawn framed by a grey-tipped Atlantic.
Many were decked out in red, white and blue, and this patriotic costuming was part of what made the picture distinctly American. I stared at it for a long time, even though I didn’t recognise any of them. It seemed to exemplify a particular display of easy, breezy wealth you can only find in the US.