Ballroom Blitz

It was staged.  Or maybe it wasn't.

The security should have been better.  Then again, maybe Donald Trump wanted it that way to let it happen.

All any of us know for certain is that Cole Tomas Allen, a tutor in southern California, made his way into the Washington, D.C. Hilton lobby with a gun in the hopes of entering the ballroom where the White House Correspondents' Association dinner and assassinating someone.  Shots were fired . . . just like Trump press secretary Karoline Leavitt said there would be before the dinner started.  Trump actually accepted the invitation from a subservient, sane-washing press to be there in the first place, as if he were putting himself and others in harm deliberately. 

Is Cole Allen an actor?  Yes, he is.  But that's a different Cole Allen.  Is Cole Tomas Allen an actor?  Did he get hired to pretend to shoot Trump?   He may or may not have been trying to shoot Trump for real, though the bullets were likely real, not blanks - makes sense, Trump probably hired the kid who shot at him back in Butler, Pennsylvania to make it look real, and if a few people - including the gunman himself - died as a result, so what?  As long as Trump came out with his popularity on the rise.  And Allen is invoking his right to remain silent. 

Except that this Allen kid is serious about going after Trump, having compared him to Hitler and having made references to Trump's alleged pedophilia.  But even if he the real deal, even if he was out to assassinate someone, how do we know he was out to kill Trump?  

Maybe he was out to shoot members of the press out of anger for kowtowing to them.

And once the assassination attempt came and went, assuming it was for real, what did Trump use it for?  To declare martial law and suspend the Bill of Rights?  To issue an executive order declaring the Democratic Party a terrorist organization and blaming the assassination attempt on them to make an excuse for banning them?

No . . . he used it to make an argument for a White House ballroom.

I kid you not.

Trump later opined that the assassination attempt would not have happened if the White House Correspondent's Association dinner had been held in a White House ballroom that should have already existed, and several of his MAGA toadies went on Fox News to endorse the idea of a White House ballroom, which they said would have far greater security than a hotel ballroom.  I have just two questions in response:

1) Why would the White House Correspondents' Association, a private cooperative of reporters covering the executive branch of the federal government, have its annual dinner in a taxpayer-funded edifice that serves as the home for the very U.S. President they cover for better or for usually worse?

2)  If the President of the United States is appearing at your private dinner in a hotel ballroom, why would the security at the hotel not be increased to the point where MS Now's Symone Sanders-Townsend could not, as she did, arrive at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner in a dress by motor scooter and go right up the front drive to the entrance?

Oh, man, I'm getting a really ridiculous image in my head right now.

But what is really ridiculous is that Trump is using this incident as a reason to get his damn ballroom built when the incident should be used to prompt a discussion of how to make schools, offices, and other pubic spaces safe from lone gunmen.  As for the so-called journalists who invited Trump - who had planned to make a speech attacking the very press that was toasting him - to their annual soirée in yet their latest effort to suck up to Der Donald, what happened this past weekend, which caused the dinner to be canceled, was nothing short of karma.

The White House Correspondents' Association is supposed to be fair and balanced toward the President of the United States and the association insists that they have covered Trump without bias for him despite the pressure against them, and if you believe that, I have a 1973 Studebaker to sell you. 

But if I did have a 1973 Studebaker to sell you, this AI picture shows what such a car might have looked like if Studebaker hadn't bitten the dust in 1966.

The Sun Sets In the East

America's democratic and architectural heritage died with Trump's latest "remodeling" of the White House.

We all knew that he was going to add a ballroom to the White House, and that was bad enough.  Obscenely bad.  But we didn't know that Trump would be demolishing the White House's East Wing - where the First lady had her office and where tourists entered the building for tours.  Trump has made it plain that presidential spouses should no longer matter (since they're all destined to remain women) and that "the people" don't belong in the people's house.   The East Wing will strictly be a corridor to access the ballroom - which is not to be for public functions. 

Unless, of course, tech moguls are considered "the public." 

This is not going well with anyone.  The East Wing was built in 1902, but the colonnades were installed by President Thomas Jefferson a century earlier.  With two stories, it was practically a building onto itself, and it provided a stylish complement to the main building.  It may have even been classier than its western counterpart, which is mostly office space and the site of the press briefing room.

And people are really, really mad at Trump for tearing down the East Wing. 😁

Pundits such as Steve Schmidt and Al Hunt are hoping that the East Wing as it existed before this week will be restored and the ballroom will be demolished.  No.  As with Adolf Hitler's expansion of the Reich Chancellery in Berlin, the entire White House will have to be demolished because Trump will have done too much "remodeling" to it for it to ever be returned to its former state.  And by the way, I'm still advocating for the United States to become, like the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, a former state - or what we stamp collectors would call a "dead country."  It's time for the United States to break up into several counties, for the Union to be dissolved.  Washington, D.C., whether it remains a city or an urban Maryland county of smaller cities - yes, I'm for breaking up the District of Freakin' Columbia! - still will have a few government buildings that will be worth repurposing, of course, but even if it survives as a city, it should never again be the capital of anything or any place.

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 more 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  - he has mentioned Chicago, Detroit and Philadelphia - are 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.

Tear Down This House!

This one.

Okay, now that I have your attention . . . let me set things up here.  Donald Trump is planning to make a major change to the White House, something that would never have appeared on Kamala Harris' to-do list or anyone else's . . . he's going to have a new White House ballroom built, with construction set to start later this fall.

He plans to have it done before January 2029, when he's scheduled to leave office.

It would replace much of the East Wing, as seen below.

Wonder why the rendering shows it in the wintertime?

As out of scale as it looks on the outside, the planned ballroom is just plain gaudy inside, with the inevitable excessive use of gold leaf.

More opulent than elegant, this planned expansion of the White House suggests comparisons to Mar-a-Lago for many, but for me I can't help but think of Adolf Hitler's Chancellery in Berlin, with its emphasis on size and ornament, which was designed by the Führer's sycophantic court architect, Albert Speer.

The Kennedy Center has also been compared to Hitler's palace, but at least the Kennedy Center isn't anyone's actual residence.  Someone's residency, yes; someone's residence, no.  The White House is the home of the President of the United States, who, more than a famous Hollywood actor, a renowned captain of industry, or an overexposed helium-voiced pop singer from Detroit, is America to the world.  And the White House is supposed to represent our values, not one President's.  This is different from President Truman having a bowling alley installed or President Ford adding an outdoor swimming pool.  This cheapens and degrades the executive mansion!

But, at this point, I am a fully committed secessionist, and I hope to see Trump become the last President of the United States before the country goes the way of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.  Because Washington, D.C. was culled from 64 square miles of the Maryland side of the Potomac River (Virginia added 36 square miles so that the District of Columbia would be ten miles square -100 square miles - but requested it returned in 1846; ironically, those 36 square miles became the city of Arlington, which is the home of the Pentagon and Arlington National Cemetery), I had imagined that Washington would become the capital of what ever post-American republic Maryland ended up being in, or maybe become the new capital of Canada if the northeastern states became Canadian provinces, another option worth considering, but now I know that Washington can't be the capital of any post-Union country.  Trump has already sullied it with changes to the White House already, such having just had the Rose Garden lawn being paved with granite (Hitler liked granite) and having already gotten rid of the trees in his first presidential term (Hitler got rid of the trees along Berlin's grand boulevard, the Unter den Linden, which got its name from those very trees, to have more state parades).  He's already wrecked havoc on the Kennedy Center.  What does he have planned for the Capital and the Supreme Court?  And is the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial in jeopardy of being dismantled?

Therefore, I propose the following ideas once Washington, D.C, is no longer the capital of anything.  

First, return it to Maryland.  To avoid the prospect of Maryland having to rescue another failing city when it's already saddled with Baltimore, divide Washington into smaller towns and either add them to existing Maryland counties or make the old District of Columbia a new county - name it Douglass County, after famous Marylander Frederick Douglass.

Second, repurpose the government buildings for apartments or office space.  As for the Capitol, turn it into an art museum, as the Louvre palace in Paris became an art museum.  The Supreme Court can become a new performing arts complex to replace the spectacularly ugly Kennedy Center.   Wall up the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials and, once the interiors are gutted and the statues are placed elsewhere, preferably in their states of origin, turn them into four-star restaurants.  Like Maison Robert in Boston occupying the former city hall.

And the White House?  Tear it down, just as the Chancellery in Berlin was.  Expand the green space south from Lafayette Square.  Get rid of any trace of Donald Trump having ever been there.  Replace the site of the Oval Office with a monument dedicated to all of the immigrants who were rounded up in the second Trump term and never heard from again.  

(As for what to do with the Washington Monument . . . yeah, I have no idea.)

This wouldn't be the first time a city built to be a national capital would cease being one.  Bear in mind that the Russian czar Peter the Great built St. Petersburg on the Baltic Sea to be a showpiece capital for the Russian Empire and replace Moscow as the seat of government.  St. Petersburg is certainly a lovely city, but when the Bolsheviks took over Russia, Lenin decided that the city was too close to Russia's western border and moved the Russian capital back to Moscow, which would become both the capital of the U.S.S.R. and the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic.  (And during the Soviet era, St. Petersburg was named Leningrad.)   St. Petersburg, however, is still a repository for Russian culture. Washington is only a seat of government.  It has no reason to exist without a country to be a seat of government for.

Just as the country it is the capital of has no reason to exist anymore.