Tuesday
First there was Caesar Augustus, who boasted, “I found Rome a city of bricks and left it a city of marble.” Then there was Christopher Wren (among others), who after the great fire of 1666 transformed London from a city of wood into a city of stone. Now we have Donald Trump, who found Washington, D.C. a city of classic monuments and is leaving it—well, the word “enshittification” comes to mind.
Everywhere we look, we see Trump’s ravages, from demolishing the White House East Wing to paving over the Rose Garden so that it resembles his Mar-a-Lago patio to gilding the West Wing so that (in the words of Rick Wilson) it “looks like Liberace and Saddam designed a 19th New Orleans century whorehouse, without the taste and elegance.”
And then there’s the failed renovation of the reflecting pool, which prompted Tim Walz to tweet,
Found an imaginary problem, said only they could fix it, didn’t listen to experts, hired buddies who grifted millions, failed miserably, bragged how great it went. The entire Trump presidency in a nutshell
If Trump were only ruining D.C. architecture, it would be bad enough, but he’s attempting to do the same to the country as a whole, from the Department of Justice and Intelligence services to our national parks to our coastline, waterways, and air quality to our world-class health organizations to our foreign aid efforts (which have saved millions of lives) to our international alliances to American democracy itself. I’ve noted in past posts that a line from Bob Dylan’s “Lily, Rosemary, and the Jack of Hearts” comes constantly to mind. Oue Nobel-winning bard says of diamond-mine owner Big Jim, “He took whatever he wanted and he laid it all to waste.”
There’s also a classical image of befouling what is good. In The Aeneid, the hungry Trojans, reeling from the destruction of their city, believe they have found refuge on an island filled with sleek herds and flocks of goats. Just as they are setting up couches “for a savory feast,” however, this happens:
But instantly, grotesquely whirring down,
The Harpies were upon us from the hills
With deafening beat of wings. They trounced our meat,
Defiling everything they touched with filth,
And gave an obscene squawk amid the stench.
We tried again. In a secluded gorge
Under a cliffside, in thick shade of trees,
We set our tables up, relit our altars.
But the loud horde again, from another quarter,
Came out of hiding, swooped down on the prey
With hooked feet, hunched to feed, and spoiled our feast.
Oliver Wendell Holmes makes memorable use of the harpy image in his poem “Old Ironsides” about plans to turn the proud old warship into scrap metal:
The harpies of the shore shall pluck
The eagle of the sea!
So think of DJT as a harpy, befouling everything he touches with filth. The only difference is that the harpies at least are defending their island from the Trojans. DJT is spoiling our feast simply to show us that he can.
