A Delta flight into Chicago Midway got clipped by a firework on its final approach yesterday. Nobody was hurt, the plane landed fine, and somewhere there’s an FAA incident report that will describe, with total sincerity, an aircraft being struck by ordnance during a routine descent on the 4th of July. It’s the kind of detail that makes a whole day’s news cycle: America turning 250 by accidentally shooting at its own air traffic.

The rest of the birthday wasn’t much gentler. PECO workers in Philadelphia walked out for the first time in the company’s history, right as a heat wave pushed the eastern grid operator into emergency measures and cut power to more than a million homes. Trump Accounts also opened for enrollment that same morning — a thousand dollars seeded per newborn, timed for maximum flag-waving. Somewhere in the gap between a birthday party and an infrastructure emergency is probably the most honest snapshot of the country available this week.

Iran staged its own performance of continuity: the long-delayed funeral for Khamenei, four months after he died in February, his three sons paraded in front of the cameras while whoever’s actually running the country stayed off it. A eulogist used the pulpit to call for the death of the American president, out loud, at a state funeral. Two countries, two big staged displays of unity in the same week, and in both, the interesting question wasn’t what got said from the podium. It was who wasn’t standing on it.

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