Wednesday, May 15, 2019

He's a Yankee Doodle Donald

In case you hadn't heard, President Trump will be the star of his own Fourth of July show in Washington this year.

Righteous people are all upset about the plans, because they deviate so recklessly from The Norm of presidents just sitting sedately on the White House balcony and watching the fireworks explode above our nation's great phallic symbol, a/k/a the Washington Monument. This monument might have presaged Trump when it sustained serious cracks a few years back due to a renegade earthquake believed to be caused by some very serious fracking in the area.



USA! USA! USA!

One typical headline bemoaning the sacrilege to be perpetrated upon our Great National Birthday is "Donald Trump Is Not America." 


 Oh, yeah?


New York Times columnist Frank Bruni says he hates to waste his valuable column real estate on Trump, but sometimes patriotism and decency demand that he take a stand, that he set people and Trump himself straight on the fact that this holiday cannot, just cannot, be all about Him:

Most of his predecessors did nothing of the kind. They understood that the day belonged to the country, not its leader, and they didn’t conflate the two.
Trump does, all the time, and it’s alternately annoying, confounding and galling. If you’re not thrilling to his vision and submitting to him, you’re possibly guilty of treason — remember that rant? If you’re asking legitimate questions about unholy alliances that he may have forged or conflicts of interest he may possess, you’re orchestrating a coup.
Most Black people and native Americans also understand that this holiday was never about them, given that the great white Fathers and Constitution-writers decreed that the enslaved would be only counted as three-fifths of a person -- and that was only so that plantation owners could be as well-represented in Congress as their northern Brethren. Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, certainly did not include the people he purported to own in his assertion that "all men are created equal." And as for the Indians, they had already been personae-non-grata and extermination fodder for hundreds of years prior to the signing of the national birth certificate - or, in the contiguous future USA, at least since Jamestown and Plymouth Rock settlers began infecting them with their European diseases before expelling them and killing them.

So, again, Trump is simply ripping the mask right off all the historical and hysterical hypocrisy that is the very heart of the Fourth of July. He is exposing and encapsulating and symbolizing American Exceptionalism into one symbolic little blob of corpulent flesh.


My comment on the Bruni column:

Trump's bizarre-spangled Fourth would lose its luster if only the cable TV networks will set aside their greed for one magical night and patriotically refuse to broadcast this grotesque event.
Will they, though? His Nuremberg-style rallies are always reliably lucrative for the networks and their corporate sponsors. Think of the audience share and the ratings, the blow-by-blow coverage starting at the crack of dawn's early light, the talking heads acting out all the shock, awe and outrage they can muster.
Who in their right consumer mind has ever stayed home on the Fourth to watch military brass bands playing on PBS, or a rerun of "Yankee Doodle Dandy" with James Cagney as George M. Cohan? Trump could literally change the whole tradition and meaning of this day for at least some people.
 Not that he'd use the occasion for the public good, of course, such as lecturing young people not to blow their fingers or their MAGA-hat wearing heads off with illegal fireworks. In fact, he might do the exact opposite, and load up his cheesy online store with Trump-branded sparklers or rocket grenade launchers for the kiddies. It would certainly help get people all hyped up for all the new global wars he seems so anxious to start with his pals Bolton and Pompeo.
 Boycott Trump this Fourth of July. As George M. Cohan might say as he rolls in his grave: "My mother will thank you, my father will thank you, my sister will thank you, and I will thank you!"





3 comments:

Erik Roth said...


"Patriotism, n. Combustible rubbish ready to the torch of any one ambitious to illuminate his name. In Dr. Johnson's famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the last resort of a scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but inferior lexicographer I beg to submit it is the first."
~ Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary (1911).

"I am against any nationalism, even in the guise of mere patriotism. Privileges based on position and property have always seemed to me unjust and pernicious, as did any exaggerated personality cult."
~ Albert Einstein, My Credo (1932).

"There are two Americas. One is the America of Lincoln and Adlai Stevenson; the other is the America of Teddy Roosevelt and the modern superpatriots. One is generous and humane, the other narrowly egotistical; one is self-critical, the other self-righteous; one is sensible, the other romantic; one is good-humored, the other solemn; one is inquiring, the other pontificating; one is moderate, the other filled with passionate intensity; one is judicious and the other arrogant in the use of great power."
~ J. William Fulbright, The Arrogance of Power (1966).

"Conceit, arrogance, and egotism are the essentials of patriotism. … Patriotism assumes that our globe is divided into little spots, each one surrounded by an iron gate. Those who have had the fortune of being born on some particular spot, consider themselves better, nobler, grander, more intelligent than the living beings inhabiting any other spot. It is, therefore, the duty of everyone living on that chosen spot to fight, kill, and die in the attempt to impose his superiority upon all the others."
~ Emma Goldman, Patriotism: a Menace to Liberty (1908).

Jay–Ottawa said...


Sharpen the skill of connecting the dots, my friends, and you'll make everyone happy.

Now then, we have to one side patriotic people who just love Chinese-made fireworks lighting the night sky over the Mall (or the Potomac––wherever) on the Fourth of July; and on the other side we have more serious and important patriots, who, periodically and preemptively, reach for American-made cruise missiles as their fireworks.

Connect the dots to please all sides while saving money with a twofer. This year, let's celebrate the Fourth of July with cruise missiles over Teheran. Shock and Awe galore.

No longer any need to hustle grandma, the kids, the Irish setter and the parakeet out to a mosquito-plagued park to see the show. CNN will televise fireworks to suit all tastes, to be watched from the comfort of one's own home. Please pass the dip.


For this Fourth of July, J. R. Bolton has been put in charge of the fireworks extravaganza. A golden table with a special button will placed at the base of the Lincoln monument. While the Marine Corps Band provides a drum roll, President Trump will ceremoniously march up the steps and place one of his short but beautiful digits on the button. With perfect timing Cruise missiles will then brighten the dawn over Teheran. Cue the West Point Chorale: "O the rockets' red glare...." Great show. No mosquito spray needed; every everyone (the kids, granny, and Uncle Bolton) can stay at home or in the war room.

After that stunning Fourth of July show, people will begin to get it. Just in case they don't, Bolton will channel Rudolf Hess: Trumpf ist Amerika!; Amerika ist Trumpf!

Clueless It Seems said...

I lived in DC for 41 years. So even with the cracks in the Monument (Penis that it is), I have seen the fireworks many times. I don't live there now but I have been many times to Plymouth Rock. It's underwater but still in a hallowed sacred becolumned portico (like all good government buildings are). Where it should be, I guess.

There are two great "creation" myths that most amerikans have not dealt with and they are genocide and slavery. It's ok to look the other way when it comes to the Founding Fathers (where were the Mothers?) telling lies since, after all, they were Gods, right?

I only know one true expat and he says "... America is crazy" He's correct. He lived and worked in Atlanta for 30 years.