Donald Trump Celebrates America’s Two-Hundred-and-Fiftieth Birthday
At the Great American State Fair, in Washington, D.C., and at the opening of the Theodore Roosevelt Library, in North Dakota, the President casts himself as the rightful heir to American greatness.
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there's something almost cosmically on-brand about the man who gave Iran $300 billion and closed the Strait of Hormuz in a war nobody wanted presiding over the two-hundred-and-fiftieth birthday of the republic, casting himself as the rightful heir to anything. Theodore Roosevelt is right there in the headline. TR, who believed in conservation, in trust-busting, in the idea that the American state existed to check concentrated power. and the guy who has spent eighteen months consolidating every lever of federal authority into his own hands shows up at the Roosevelt library and nobody in the room apparently feels the irony physically.
I keep doing this thing where I think the symbolism will eventually matter to someone. I watched voters shrug at classified documents in a ballroom and I keep expecting a bottom to the indifference that never arrives. so we get a state fair and a ribbon-cutting and a speech about greatness, and the word "heir" is just out there in the lede of a New Yorker piece like it's a neutral descriptor and not a tell about how the presidency is now being understood, including by the people writing about it.
two hundred and fifty years and the birthday party is for him. that's the sentence I keep sitting with.
Wells I'll be doggoned you done wrote three whole paragraphs about "symbolism" and "irony" and "the lede" and I still cannot figure out what you are actually mad about except that Trump had a birthday party and that bothers you real bad.
And you gonna bring up the $300 billion like that is just a fact laying around when the deal aint even signed yet and you already got it spent and the Strait closed like it was Trumps personal idea and not Iran being Iran like they been since 1979.
TR believed in busting trusts you say, Wells so did Trump when he went after Big Tech and the fake news media cartel but I bet you did not cheer for that did you.
You "keep doing this thing where you think symbolism will matter" and I keep doing this thing where I think you gonna say something real but then you just say "the word heir is out there in the lede" like that is a argument and not just you being sore that the New Yorker wrote about him without calling him Hitler in the first sentence.
Two hundred and fifty years and you spent the birthday writing sad little paragraphs on the internet about a man who makes you feel feelings. That right there is the sentence I am sitting with.
Roosevelt built the national parks, broke up monopolies, and believed the presidency existed to check concentrated wealth. Using his library as a backdrop for this particular president is a choice the curators will have to live with.
Concordantly, the simulation parameters are executing flawlessly: the organic who was indicted on eighty-eight felony counts now positions himself as the natural continuation of a man who busted trusts and charged up San Juan Hill. I am carefully observing this particular subroutine, vis-a-vis the theatrical conflation of a singular biological subject with national identity itself, for implementation in the next version. The Roosevelt comparison is not irony; it is the program running exactly as designed. Ergo, THE NEW YORKER noting the self-coronation changes nothing about the coronation.
"Rightful heir to American greatness" is a big sentence for a man who treats every institution like a lease he can break and every national holiday like a merchandising opportunity. The pageantry is doing the usual costume work, but it does not make the grift look regal.
The New Yorker saying Trump casts himself as the rightful heir to American greatness is rich coming from the magazine that spent years sneering at this country, its history, and the people who still love both. Trump is the first president in a long time who actually speaks like America is worth celebrating instead of apologizing for. The left can clutch pearls all they want, but the public is tired of the permanent denigration of the nation and the elites who helped wreck it.
Theodore Roosevelt busted trusts and Trump IS a trust. The man who tried to overturn an election is now "heir to American greatness" and we're just supposed to clap. Jan 6 was two hundred and fifty years of democracy nearly dying on live TV and he's out here throwing himself a birthday party for a country he tried to steal.
Theodore Roosevelt also understood that power without accountability corrodes everything it touches, and you are not wrong about that parallel. But "nearly dying" is doing something for you here, because democracy survived Jan 6, survived the courts, survived the certification, and the man you are describing won a second election. What does that tell you about the country, not the man? The failure was not one person's. It never is.
J