An American Germania

Trump wants to put his own stamp on Washington, D.C.   And nothing allows him to put his imprimatur on the nation's capital than having the National Guard and other units of the military take over policing in the District of Columbia.

The ostensible reason for sending National Guard troops to the District is to rein in out-of-control crime in the city after one of Elon Musk's former Department of Government Efficiency henchmen got assaulted in a car-theft attempt.  But the real reason that Trump is laying down the law - martial law - in D.C. is because he's a white man who wants to dominate a black-majority city whose mayor is a black woman.  It couldn't really be because of rampant crime - crime has dropped considerably in Washington for years now.  If Trump wanted to do something about out-of-control crime, he'd have sent troops to New Orleans or Atlanta - cities in Republican states.  The cities Trump plans to take his military-dictatorship road show to more cities - he has mentioned Chicago, Detroit and Philadelphia - cities with large black populations in states with Democratic governors.  And New York City, his former hometown, could be next, assuming Zohran Mamdani is elected mayor in November.  And if Mikie Sherill is elected governor of New Jersey - an electoral outcome I seriously doubt at this point - Newark, which is overwhelmingly black and Hispanic and has a mayor named Ras Baraka (instead of Ralph Jones, which would likely be his name had his poet-playwright father not changed the family name from Jones to Baraka), would certainly be added to the list.  (And maybe overwhelmingly black East Orange next door, as long as the troops are in the neighborhood.)  All of this is just fine with the Republicans, who are ready with rejoinders on the need to fight crime - a reality for many even in America's safest cities - when the Democrats inevitably object to Trump's actions.  

None of that accounts for why Trump chose Washington to make an example of before any other places, having already made an example out of Los Angeles.  Trump, quite bluntly, wants to remake Washington in his image.  Why else would he be planning to build a ballroom for the White House?  Why else would he take over the Kennedy Center?  His plans to turn Washington into a Mar-a-Lago-style utopia is redolent of Adolf Hitler's plan to turn Berlin into Germania, a grand city Hitler had hoped would dwarf ancient Rome and modern Rome as well.  He had his architect Albert Speer draw up plans for a domed assembly hall so huge it would end up having its own weather inside.  When all is said and done, Speer may end up having accomplished less in Berlin than what Trump's sycophantic architects and construction firms pull off in Washington.  Trump is certainly drawn to grandiose projects much like Hitler was, and he shares an artistic sensibility with Hitler toward using size and ornament to send a message as to who is the leader and that the leader shall not be opposed or questioned.  Hitler had been a watercolor artist and knew how art and architecture could be used to project an image of strength.  Likewise, Trump has been a real estate developer with a taste for opulence and knows how to project power and wealth in his buildings.  The only difference between Hitler and Trump is that Trump may actually have more money than Hitler did.

It is therefore in Washington where Trump is planning to create a citadel of power and domination, where every aspect of life conforms to the whims of the leader.  If the White House becomes another Chancellery, what can we expect of the Capitol?  The Smithsonian Institution is already having its mission statement rewritten to emphasize a feel-good historical narrative of the nation as viewed by white patriarchs wearing rose-colored glasses rather than the multiethnic story of struggle and adversity that American history really is.  By turning the Smithsonian into a repository of the sort of history represented in children's biographies of famous Americans - biographies that leave out all of the flaws and faults of our historical figures - Trump is infantilizing the country's story.

Trump wants to enforce this with his occupying military force in the nation's capital.  It's his show, and he's directing it like the pseudo-documentarian reality TV series he once hosted.  But what happens when the fantasy is over?

Let's just say Hitler learned the answer to that question the hard way when the Red Army entered Berlin in 1945.