Mined from the notebooks and adapted from the Twitter feed, Saturday morning, July 4, Independence Day, 2020. Posted Saturday morning, July 25.
Monumentalizing his ego: Trump celebrating the beginning of the Fourth of July weekend by holding a campaign rally in front of Mount Rushmore at taxpayer expense. The military band is apparently playing the National Anthem. Notice how the First Lady has her hand over her heart? Notice how her husband is standing there like a stiff? Photo by Anna Moneymaker for the New York Times, July 3, 2020.
[Gotta catch up on my July blogging while there’s still some July left: What the Fourth of July means to Donald Trump---the same thing everything means to Donald Trump: the wonderfulness of Donald Trump.]
To kick off Independence Day weekend our patriotic president flew out to South Dakota and, in front of Mount Rushmore, and held a stationary parade for himself, complete with fireworks and a fighter jet flyover. Among the many egregiousnesses of the event, Trump gave a speech New York Times White House Correspondent Annie Karni matter-of-factly described as “dark and divisive”. In honor of the Fourth, a date on which we celebrate a document that directly challenged the divine right of kings, Trump gave a speech asserting the divine right of kings
One king in particular----His Highness, himself.
He stood before the likenesses of four of our greatest Presidents to put himself on their level or, rather, since they were reduced to mere backdrops, and the intended effect was to have them looking at him with approval, to put himself above them
This celebration of ego wasn't a demonstration of the height of his vanity. It revealed the depth of his self-loathing.
The extent of Trump's self-loathing is monstrous.
Only someone who hates himself so profoundly would need to convince himself he was superior to Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt in order to feel he wasn't totally worthless.
Three of the four on the rock wouldn't have dared compare themselves to the fourth, or, rather, to the first: First in War, First in Peace, First in the Hearts of his Countrymen, first figure on the rock, counting from the left. TR wouldn't have dared comparing himself to the other three.
And all four would have been embarrassed and even disgusted to see themselves monumentalized like this.
FWIW, because we're not allowed to talk about white men who've been dead 100, 150, 200 and more years without asserting our own moral and intellectual superiority to them, all four would have been fine with the mountain having been stolen from the Sioux.
But to get back to the meaning of the 4th. It's a celebration of a document asserting that "all men are created equal" and our nation's lifelong argument has been over who is included in that "all men" and our national struggle with ourselves has been expanding inclusion.
Needless to say Trump represents the attempt to contract the inclusion and his speech was an argument that inclusion isn't based on the Creator's having endowered us all with universal inalienable rights.
Inclusion is a gift handed out by rich conservative white men.
Trivially, the whole sideshow was embarrassing and cheezy, just like Trump. At one point early on it looked like an 8th grade history pageant with the shop teacher roped into playing Lincoln because he's tall.
Uncredited photo via Twitter.
The BBC headlined their preview story with the statement that Trump was *hosting* the event.
Mount Rushmore is a National Memorial, in the keeping of the National Park Service, so technically, the American people were hosting Trump's Ain't I Wonderful Show at his own invitation, and paying for it.
But closer to the truth, since it's on Lakota land, the Lakota were the "hosts", and they didn't give Trump permission to barge in and take over their home to throw a party in his own honor.
He wasn't welcome and they made that clear…
"A protester rallies the crowd on U.S. Highway 16A, just southwest of Keystone, S.D., and inside the border of the Mount Rushmore National Monument, prior to the arrival of President Donald Trump to the monument for a fireworks show. Jeremy Fugleberg / Forum News Service" via the Grand Forks Herald.
On another note, and you’re going to love this: here’s more from Annie Karni:
Mr. Trump barely mentioned the frightening resurgence of the pandemic, even as the country surpassed 53,000 new cases Friday and health officials across the nation urged Americans to scale back their Fourth of July plans.
Instead, appealing unabashedly to his base with ominous language and imagery, he railed against what he described as a dangerous “cancel culture” intent on toppling monuments and framed himself as a strong leader who would protect the Second Amendment, law enforcement and the country’s heritage….
Under the granite gaze of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt, Mr. Trump announced plans to establish what he described as a “vast outdoor park that will feature the statues of the greatest Americans to ever live,” an apparent repudiation of the growing pressure to remove statues tied to slavery or colonialism.
So, the upshot from tonight: Trump went all the way to Mt Rushmore to tell us that the biggest threat to the Republic is that liberals don't venerate various blocks of stone and bits of tin enough and not the resurgence of the pandemic that's already killed ~130k of us…
And he---he alone---will fix the problem by creating by an act of will a giant rock garden and tourist attraction.
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