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| Fireworks, National Park Service photo |
“President Trump has effectively taken charge of the nation’s premier Fourth of July celebration in Washington, moving the gargantuan fireworks display from its usual spot on the Mall to be closer to the Potomac River and making tentative plans to address the nation from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, according to top administration officials. The president’s starring role has the potential to turn what has long been a nonpartisan celebration of the nation’s founding into another version of a Trump campaign rally. Officials said it is unclear how much the changes may cost, but the plans have already raised alarms among city officials and some lawmakers about the potential impact of such major alterations to a time-honored and well-organized summer tradition.”
This lede to a May 11 Washington Post story written by Josh Dawsey, Juliet Eilperin, and Peter Jamison, depicts, once again, the (so far) relentless rising red tide filled with the stinking detritus of blatant executive overreach, proud ignorance, and willful arrogance by a sociopathic president who has no business being in the White House, much less in the business of orchestrating his selfish version of our national celebration.
When I was a boy growing up here in Washington seven decades ago, the Mall was a place of peace, tranquility, beauty, and reflection. I’ve lost count of the evenings my father drove my mother, sister, and me down to the Lincoln Memorial and parked right in front of the steps so we could walk right up to Mr. Lincoln. I was so small…he was so impressive, 175 tons of Georgia white marble bathed in soft light, sitting tall, his steady gaze taking in the Reflecting Pool, the Washington Monument, and the Capitol. As I got older, my father would read aloud the words of the Gettysburg Address and Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address—both of which I would quote regularly, as a speechwriter for Members of Congress and Cabinet secretaries.
For me, those words, along with the Declaration of Independence and the Preamble to the Constitution, define the full span of America’s greatness, humility, and noble purpose—qualities sadly lacking not only in our president, but in all those secular politicians, media fawners, and religious leaders who continue to enable his insanity.
The Mall has been the preferred site of massive marches, concerts, and tent cities that filled the greenswards paralleling the Reflecting Pool. Those events were demonstrations of the most fundamental of all American rights—the First Amendment’s Right of Free Speech. I’ve attended many of those events—anti-war demonstrations, Earth Day celebrations, civil rights speeches, and open-air concerts filled with protest songs sung in the full voice of free expression. Such is the glory of our democracy that a place as apolitical as the National Mall--neutral ground for any national conversation--can become the crowd-swarming nexus for myriad points of view, untrammeled, unfettered, and unbreached by self-serving political pontification. Until now.
Instead of exulting in our hard-won independence, and exhorting all Americans to redouble our efforts to eradicate the troublesome vestiges of xenophobia and all the dark and hateful -isms that divide us, the president preaches a poorly-written sermon filled with lies and scorn and shaming. Instead of encouraging us to stand on the shoulders of our Founders (whose faults we acknowledge) and look with clear vision beyond our horizons, this administration holds us down, pits us against each other, gaslights the poorest and most vulnerable of our fellow citizens, and, when called out by the news media for his baseless claims, the president bangs the drum for his own sick Twitter version of violence against journalists and justice.
If this president could, he would dissolve the First Amendment overnight. And his most recent assault on the separation of powers, his desire to roll over Article I of the Constitution, his nose-thumbing at our system of laws and our judiciary, his affection for foreign powers aligned against us, do not portend a madman in power…they are the “real-and-now” exemplars of a man whose unhinged and unrestrained grabs for dictatorship tear away at the blood-won parchment contract between the People and their government.
Now, he wants to turn our national celebration of Independence from Red-Coat tyranny into a red-capped rally designed to stick his own tyrannical fingers in the eyes of the rest of us who just want to enjoy a fireworks-filled evening of fun and music on our beloved Mall.
The Mall has been the preferred site of massive marches, concerts, and tent cities that filled the greenswards paralleling the Reflecting Pool. Those events were demonstrations of the most fundamental of all American rights—the First Amendment’s Right of Free Speech. I’ve attended many of those events—anti-war demonstrations, Earth Day celebrations, civil rights speeches, and open-air concerts filled with protest songs sung in the full voice of free expression. Such is the glory of our democracy that a place as apolitical as the National Mall--neutral ground for any national conversation--can become the crowd-swarming nexus for myriad points of view, untrammeled, unfettered, and unbreached by self-serving political pontification. Until now.
Instead of exulting in our hard-won independence, and exhorting all Americans to redouble our efforts to eradicate the troublesome vestiges of xenophobia and all the dark and hateful -isms that divide us, the president preaches a poorly-written sermon filled with lies and scorn and shaming. Instead of encouraging us to stand on the shoulders of our Founders (whose faults we acknowledge) and look with clear vision beyond our horizons, this administration holds us down, pits us against each other, gaslights the poorest and most vulnerable of our fellow citizens, and, when called out by the news media for his baseless claims, the president bangs the drum for his own sick Twitter version of violence against journalists and justice.
If this president could, he would dissolve the First Amendment overnight. And his most recent assault on the separation of powers, his desire to roll over Article I of the Constitution, his nose-thumbing at our system of laws and our judiciary, his affection for foreign powers aligned against us, do not portend a madman in power…they are the “real-and-now” exemplars of a man whose unhinged and unrestrained grabs for dictatorship tear away at the blood-won parchment contract between the People and their government.
Now, he wants to turn our national celebration of Independence from Red-Coat tyranny into a red-capped rally designed to stick his own tyrannical fingers in the eyes of the rest of us who just want to enjoy a fireworks-filled evening of fun and music on our beloved Mall.
He can never just let us be us. It has to be about him 24/7/365, and if we all want to spend some quality time with our families, friends, fellow citizens, and visitors from afar, he will find some way to subvert our best plans and traditions into ugliness. That’s exactly what he wants to do by moving the Fourth of July celebration from the Mall to a corner of the Potomac that will allow him to direct his own sad production of Trumpian back-patting, aided and abetted by his even sadder collection of administration appointees, up-sucking media acolytes, and MAGA followers who will, no doubt, draw themselves around their sick leader.
If, in fact, the president prevails and the Fourth of July celebration becomes just one more political miasma through which we can see but darkly the once-bright flares and bouquets of Independence bursting over the Mall in unalloyed joy, I will encourage my fellow Americans to turn away. The stink from Trump’s Stygian stalls would be too much to bear.
If, in fact, the president prevails and the Fourth of July celebration becomes just one more political miasma through which we can see but darkly the once-bright flares and bouquets of Independence bursting over the Mall in unalloyed joy, I will encourage my fellow Americans to turn away. The stink from Trump’s Stygian stalls would be too much to bear.
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