Trump's Long, Hot, Wet, Dumb Weekend
It was worse than you think...
The headline sounds like a bad 1980s movie, but in a sense, that’s a perfect summary of the absurd, dumb weekend Trump executed in place of an actual celebration of the 250th anniversary of the founding of this great nation.
Start with the fireworks, because in the increasing common collision of metaphor and reality, they were a perfect example of the moment.
Boston and New York and dozens of other American cities put on magnificent shows Saturday night. Real spectacle, real craft, real joy. Trump’s “biggest ever” artillery barrage on the Mall, by contrast, disappeared into its own smoke on a still, soupy night, a thumping and banging behind a nearly opaque gray smoke curtain, flashes of color strangled in the haze. The perfect metaphor delivered itself free of charge: maximum ordnance, zero transparency, all noise.
The whole evening was like that. Tiresome and grinding, it started late and ended late, cooked by heat and hammered by storms. Melania wore the expression of a woman waiting for a colonoscopy rather than one beholding the majesty of America. At one point the cameras caught Trump watching Fox watching Trump, a recursive loop of self-regard so perfect it should hang in the Smithsonian next to the Saratoga flag. And of course we got the usual Trump-era counting games. Trump: millions! Reality: wut?
I keep coming back to 1976.
I’m old enough to remember the Bicentennial, and the contrast is brutal. That celebration came at the end of a miserable American decade. We were post-Vietnam, post-Watergate, mid-malaise, a country with every reason to feel sorry for itself.
And instead, the 200th was an act of national uplift. It was about America. Our flawed, glorious, improbable history. Our journey. Our future. It was fundamentally about us.
The TrumpCo 250th Trumpapalooza, Sponsored By TrumpCoin LLC and Hosted by Trump Family Enterprises on the Trump Mall (tm), was, as always, about him.
