Tuesday, January 19, 2021

While Holding My Breath, Crossing My Fingers, Throwing Salt Over My Shoulder and Not Tempting Fate

Garden of American Heroes?  Sounds very Mussolini-American to me.  I missed that particular atrocity of Trumpian imagination.  Really of some numb nutz in his entourage, like Trump ever heard of most of the people on "his" list.  I mean, what are the odds that Trump ever heard of Hannah Arendt>? And I doubt the person who made up the list has much of a real knowledge of the people on it, Red Cloud and Tecumseh  is on the same list with a number of genocidalists, Davvy Crockett, for example.  I wonder what the unreconstructed Calvinist Johnathan Edwards and the post-Christian Ralph Waldo Emerson would make of each other.

 I suppose We The People are supposed to pay for the creepy statues of his hodgepodge of "heroes".  I'm opposed to that, I don't like this monument building mania that followed on the popularity of Maya Lin's Vietnam Memorial which, which was hardly built when some of the boys, apparently furious with a girl coming up with an understated and thought provoking design with an attempt to  defaced it with a more traditional war sculpture.  After Lin objected to placing it at the apex of her design a reportedly far better placement for the statue was found that allowed both of them to maintain their artistic integrity.  

Following on,though, was a monsoon of memorials, some of which was about as inoffensive and anodyne as public stuff like that is, much of it was dreadful.  Trump, ever eager to have his name on things, certainly preferably things he could get other peoples' money to build, wanted something that might get his name slapped on it.

I looked at the list, one of the big things that jumped out at me is  Theodor Seuss Geisel, one of those dear old commies who I'm sure would have hated Trump and everything he was. Maybe he's on the list because Green Eggs and Ham is the one and only book Trump ever managed to finish. 

 

I hope this is something that never happens. It's gross.  

4 comments:

  1. It’s an EO, not a Congressional authorization for funding. This is Trump’s lame attempt to throw red meat to his base, or burnish his “legacy.” There are reports he’s actually expressed concern about that. Of course his legacy is to push every former POTUS up one space, to make room for Trump at the bottom.

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  2. I'd have a hard time choosing between Trump and W, the Iraq invasion being, at least, one atrocity that topped much of what Trump did. The Republican Party seems to be having a run of really terrible presidencies. If Trump wanted to do something really useful he could start that Trump party, the "Patriot Party" and make sure Republicans don't control the government until they'd at least gotten the worst of the fascists out of it. Ross Perot was one of those who hated Maya Lin's monument, as I recall, isn't that what he called his "party" that had that same effect, albeit too briefly?

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    1. Perot got bored with politics and his “party,” and Perot was truly rich and didn’t need the trouble (he was also as paranoid as Trump). Trump is going to spend his days trying to hold onto his money. He’ll be as forgotten and politically impotent as Perot was.

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    2. Oh, come on. I live to see them perp-walked in leg irons in orange.

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